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THE SCHOOLMASTER 



IN 



LITERATURE 



CONTAHSTNG SELECTIOlSrS FEOM THE WEITINGS OF ASCHAM, 

MOLlfeEE, EULLEK, EOUSSEAU, SHENSTONE, COWPEE, 

GOETHE, PESTALOZZI, PAGE, MTTFOED, BEONT:^, 

HUGHES, DICKENS, THACKEEAY, lEVING, 

GEOEGE ELIOT, EGGLESTON, 

THOMPSON, AND OTHEES 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 



EDWARD EGGLESTON 



{ 



APR go IS' 



/^ br^'V-'*^ 



NEW YORK . : - CINCINNATI • : • CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 






Copyright, 1892, by 
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Aster Place, New York 



/ ^37 

OOlvrTENTS. 



Page 

Introduction 5 

Roger Ascliam 13 

Extracts from Toxophilus 15 

Extracts from the Scholemaster 18 

Quick's Adaptation from the Scholemaster 30 

Jean-Baptlste Poquelin Moliere 25 

The Education of M. Jourdain 26 

Jean Jacques Rousseau 41 

Quick's Adaptation and Summary of Emile 42 

William Slienstone , . 64 

The Schoolmistress .......... 65 

Thomas Fuller 74 

The Good Schoolmaster 74 

Of Memory 76 

Johann Heinricli Pestalozzi ........ 78 

Gertrude at Home . 83 

The School in Bonnal 92 

A Chapter from Christopher and Eliza Ill 

William Cowper 118 

Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools 120 

The Sage Called " Discipline " 139 

Johann Wolfgang von Ooethe . . . . . 148 

Selections from Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre ...... 144 

Mary Russell Mitford 187 

The Village Schoolmistress . . 188 

Dr. Courtly's School 199 

Charlotte Bronte .... = .,.. 203 

Lowood School ...,..., c .. 204 

3 



4 CONTENTS 

. • 

Page 

David Perkins Page ..... . . 230 

The Schoolmaster 232 

William Makepeace Thackeray . . . . . . 242 

Miss Pinkerton's School 243 

Dr. Swish tail's Academy 258 

Mr. Veal's School 270 

Thomas Hughes 278 

Chapters from Tom Brown's School-Days at Rugby .... 279 

Daniel Pierce Thompson .312 

The School in the Horn of the Moon 312 

The Examination at Mill Town Emporium 336 

Charles Dickens 352 

Dr. Blimber's School 353 

The School at Salem House 395 

Dr. Strong's School 422 

Dotheboys Hall 425 

AVilliam Mathews 456 

Judge Story as a Teacher 457 

George Eliot 465 

The Night School and the Schoolmaster 467 

Tom's First Half 472 

Washington Irving 405 

Ichabod Crane 496 

George MacDonald 504 

Extracts from Malcolm 505 

Edward Eggleston . 551 

A Struggle for the Mastery 552 

Some Western Schoolmasters ........ 556 

D'Arcy Wentw^orth Thompson 570 

Day-Dreams of a Schoolmaster . . 571 



INTRODUCTION 

It is my office only to stand in the portico and open the door 
of the present edifice, which has been builded right skillfully 
by another. If the delight of the intelligent reader were the 
only purpose in view, hardly anything could be better than such 
a compilation as the present one, showing the part played by 
the schoolmaster in the literature of diverse ages and of differ- 
ent nations. It is quite worth while, for example, to take the 
ideal of a good schoolmaster constructed by quaint old Thomas 
Fuller and put it alongside the Blimbers, and to place Shen- 
stone's village school, 

' ' where sits the dame disguised in look profound, 
And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around," 

in juxtaposition with the immaculate Miss Pinkerton's most 
respectable seat of learning on Chiswick Mall, or with quaint 
old Bartle Massey's night school for full-grown men. Here we 
have the schoolmaster under many lights, and literature in 
widely varying moods. As a means of cultivating a taste for 
literature and a discriminating taste in literature, I know of no 
better collection than this, particularly for the use of teachers, 
whose relish is certain to be quickened by professional interest 
in the subject. 

But literary interest and literary culture are by no means the 
only ends served by such a collation of representative delinea- 
tions of the schoolmaster. Some phases of truth are not easily 
communicated in didactic form ; they are seen best in the deli- 
cate shading of artistic literature. This is what Charles Lamb 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION 

calls the " twilight of truth." Perhaps Dickens's Dr. Blimber, 
with his everlasting iteration of " Bring him on, Cornelia, bring 
him on," has done more than the soberest treatises on peda- 
gogy to discourage the ancient mode of education by cramming 
— the only sort of infanticide permitted in civilized countries. 
A whole board of education of the unprogressive sort, once so 
common, seems to be wrapped up in Dr. Blimber, with his 
stolid ignorance of the higher uses of learning and his stupid 
demand for a visible " bringing on " of the poor little Dombey. 
Cornelia Blimber is but the conductor through which Dr. Blim- 
ber works his " bringing on," propelled as many another teacher 
has found herself propelled by the force behind her to push 
those who ought not to be pushed. But behind the unintelli- 
gent board of Blimbers are innumerable other Blimbers in the 
unintelligent parents, who also demand that Cornelia shall 
" bring him on." 

The maker of this collection has sought by means of literary 
cross-lights to give the teacher, not direct instruction in method, 
but something quite as valuable. Here the schoolmaster sees 
his profession in the light of literary culture and literary art, 
and, in some cases, he sees it illuminated by the light of genius. 
From such treatment of the subject the teacher gains broader 
views of his calling in its relation to life. This enlightenment 
is quite as necessary as special instruction to produce the real 
teacher. The real teacher is in turn the very leaven that 
leavens the whole lump of modern civilization. 

An estimable gentleman said to me recently, "In all my 
life at school it was my misfortune not to encounter one real 
teacher." I was not surprised at the tone of regret in which 
this was spoken. But the man who has been so unhappy as 
never, during his period of plasticity, to have fallen into the 



INTRODUCTION 7 

shaping hands of a real teacher, is hardly capable of estimat- 
ing the extent of his irreparable loss. 

The real teacher is by no means a modern invention. One 
cannot be sure that we have now a larger proportion of men 
and,women answering that description than there were centuries 
ago. The good and great Moravian brother Comenius, with his 
admirable spirit and methods, lived away 'back in the sixteenth 
century. And was Roger Ascham the only good English 
" Scholemaster " in the days of Queen Elizabeth ? There can be 
no doubt that we know better than the generality of old mas- 
ters what to teach, and it would be a pity indeed if, with all 
our philosophizing and experimenting, with all our normal 
schooling and our teachers' institutes innumerable, we had not 
found out some things about method that our forefathers did 
not know. It is even possible that we have put too much stress 
upon methods of instruction, and that in our conceit of system 
we have hardly left standing space for the living teacher. 
The individuality of the real teacher sometimes unfits him to 
serve well as a cog-wheel in the clock-work of a complicated 
school system. His very originality is sometimes laid against 
him for a fault by the austere method-ist in pedagogy. 

Far be it from me to affirm that we can count fewer real 
teachers in the hundred now than there were formerly. That 
would be to deny that we have made any real progress, for the 
best school systems and the most admirable of teaching methods 
would be a thousand times worse than useless if they should 
render the production of real teachers impossible. But we may 
have exaggerated the relative importance of method in teaching. 
There are signs that we are entering on a new epoch, in which 
men will count for more than prescribed methods, and in which 
the production of genuine teachers will be the objective. 



8 INTRODUCTION 

Do not expect me to define the term. The best things elude 
definition. Words are not subtle enough to describe things 
that are j)riceless. If I - were to say that the real teacher is 
devoted to his work, manifests a lively and intelligent sympathy 
with his pupils, evinces tact in management and ingenuity in 
conveying information, and has the sort of enthusiasm that 
gives him a momentum communicable to those under his care, 
I should have enumerated enough of his qualities to enable one 
to classify him. But how far short of filling the measure of 
his description is this list of qualities. Put these things to- 
gether, and you will still have something less than the man. 

This is partly because men and women who are capable of 
shaping others have something about them that cannot be set 
down in a catalogue. A lady said to me the other day, that 
while qualities were valuable, quality was something much 
greater. A good expression of a profound truth ! Count the 
standard virtues on your fingers, and you can recall estimable 
people who possess them all, but who, nevertheless, do not go 
for much. That which my friend called quality — that some- 
thing blending all these qualities into one harmonious and 
potent whole, is lacking. You do not think of the qualities of 
a man like Arnold of Rugby, or of a man like the revered but 
unfortunate Pestalozzi. One could not pick either the one or 
the other to pieces, and make any recognizable catalogue of his 
parts. There is an integrity, a wholeness about the efficient 
man or woman of any sort, that defies analysis. 

The test of the teacher is efficiency. Not the showing he is 
able to make in an examination, but the final result he can 
produce in the character of those who come from under his 
hand. This efficiency is not of the sort that can be counted 
upon always to work an increase of salary. But the ability to 



INTBODUGTIOir 9 

leave a lasting mark on the mind and character of a pupil, is 
the unmistakable sign of the real teacher. And the source of 
this power lies not in the teacher's acquirements, but deeper in 
the very fiber of his character. "Words have weight, when 
there is a man behind them," said the prophet of Concord. It 
is the man or woman behind the instruction that makes the 
real teacher a great deal more than a mere instructor. 

Examinations for license to teach do not get at what is most 
valuable in the teacher. A touch of mental enlightenment, 
or the possession of the least bit of the real teaching quality 
is worth more than expertness in extracting cube-roots. Un- 
happily we have no means of measuring character with pre- 
cision, no accurate test for a teacher's aptitude. The owner of a 
creamery buys all his milk by the gallon. He pays at the 
same rate for the thinnest sky-tinted product that he does for 
the butter-laden contribution of a Jersey herd. I went through 
an exhibition of dairy appliances recently,- and was interested 
most of all in a method newly devised for testing the butter- 
making qualities of milk. By the addition of an acid to a 
sample of milk, the butter oils were made to rise to the surface 
in a little bottle with a slender neck, graded like a ther- 
mometer. You can read on the scale the quality of the milk 
expressed in millimeters. But we measure the qualifications of 
our teachers in the old-fashioned way ; we buy their grammar 
and arithmetic by the gallon. It is a question of quantity. 
" How much of each branch of study are you loaded up with? " 
demands the examiner. Now there are some experts in gram- 
mar and arithmetic who have no power to communicate even 
their technical knowledge to the pupil. How much less can 
they perform any of those higher services that the real teacher 
renders to the mind and heart of a pupil! Shall we ever 



10 INTRODUCTION 

devise a delicate scale for gauging the quality that gives the 
better teacher his superiority ? 

" Born, not made," is true of the great teacher as of the great 
man of every sort. But it is not with the great schoolmaster 
that we have to do. A man may be real without being great, 
and it can do no harm to fix the attention of the teacher of 
average gifts on this ideal of genuineness. Every man and 
woman is to be accounted a real teacher who establishes a vital 
relation between himself and the developing pupil ; who is, to a 
greater or less extent, a living force in the formation of charac- 
ter and the enlargement of mind. In this class the mere hearer 
of recitations and keeper of grade marks has no place whatever. 

Real teachers are of various magnitudes, and the humblest 
mistress of a country school, who manages to inspire her pupils 
with a thirst for knowledge and an aspiration for veracity in 
character is in the class of real teachers as truly as Socrates, 
the first great professor of the divine art of molding youthful 
character and pushing the human mind in the direction of 
truth. Blessed be the humble teacher who, without any chance 
for the great rewards of fame or money, renders noble service 
and leaves the impress of a genuine and generous character in 
one little corner of the world. No cyclopaedia or dictionary of 
notables ever mentions that wonderful old Pennsylvania Dutch- 
man, Christopher Dock. But, in the obscurity of the Pennsyl- 
vania back country in the last century, he did some of the 
noblest and most enlightened teaching the world has ever seen. 
He was a schoolmaster, indeed, not a master of the school in any 
merely outward sense, but master of the very souls of his rustic 
pupils. 

Even of the humblest real teacher the words of Fuller are 
true, perhaps : " His genius inclines him with delight to the 



INTRODUCTION 11 

profession." I should despair of the success of any teacher who 
found no ground of pleasure in the work. But all such sources 
of enlightenment as the present work add greatly to the effi- 
ciency of the teacher. They make the light places in the 
teacher's work brighter, and shed some rays of illuminating 
humor and fancy upon the darker parts. 

The kingdom of heaven is not the only good thing that 
Cometh without observation. Great movements rarely make 
much stir at the outset. It is only by the harvest that we are 
able to measure the value of the seed-time. I suppose that 
this book had its origin in the Teachers' Reading Circles, which 
are one of "the new things under the sun." I do not know any 
better new fashion in these last years of a great century than 
the reading circles. Certain obscure religious and reformatory 
societies that came into being in England, nobody knows how, as 
the Seventeenth Century drew to its end, proved to be the very 
germs of some of the greatest movements that characterized the 
Eighteenth Century. Just now, as the Nineteenth Century is 
handing over the legacy of our age to the next, the public 
interested in education has come suddenly to realize that the 
culture of the teacher must be progressive. Perhaps in the 
Twentieth Century schoolmasters will no longer be accused of 
having minds rendered dry and uninteresting by unbroken 
contact with undeveloped intellects, and by a ceaseless repetition 
of the same instruction. The true antidote to what may be 
called the teacher's palsy is a constant acquisition of fresh 
knowledge or a continual whetting of the mental appetite by 
means of good literature. I know of no other means by which 
may be acquired and retained that perennial freshness of mind 
so necessary to success in teaching. 

On one, point the greatest masters are agreed — that knowledge 



12 INTRODUGTION 

should be given in cheerful and delightful ways. Comenius so 
long ago as the Sixteenth Century insisted upon a cheerful 
environment, a pleasant- schoolroom, and cheerful objects in 
association with study. And his contemporary, Ascham, had a 
similar notion ; he would have learning " mingled with honest 
mirth and comely exercises." Long afterward, Pestalozzi went 
deeper, and sought to make the very exercises of learning agree- 
able by having them accord with the child's nature, and not 
cross it. His pupil, Froebel, even sought with ingenuity to 
bring to his aid child-plays, dancing, and music. All the mas- 
ters, however they may have differed as to the means, agreed in 
desiring to make learning delightful, in trying to rob school 
toil of its irksomeness. I may venture to suggest that good as 
was Comenius's notion of a cheerful schoolroom, Ascham 's alloy 
of honest mirth and comely exercises, and Froebel's ingenious 
play-work, there is one means of rendering the pursuit of 
study delightful that transcends all of these. That is fresh- 
mindedness in the teacher. The master whose mind is re- 
freshed by his own delight in literature, whose zest for fresh 
knowledge remains keen, will do more than all else to render 
the pathway of the industrious pupil delightsome. 

If, then, the Teachers' Reading Circles are to give us circles of 
reading teachers, hail to that which will do much to deliver us 
from the dry teacher and from insipid teaching ! 

But if literature be so good a thing, why do I stand so long 
in the gap, and detain the wistful reader from the green pas- 
tures that lie beyond ? To borrow a stock phrase from the old 
playwrights, " Masters, let us within." 

Edwaed Eggleston. 



THE 

SCHOOLMASTER IN LITERATURE 



ROGER ASCHAM 

1515-1568 

EoGER AscHAM was born in 1515, and took his degree at the univer- 
sity of Cambridge at the age of nineteen. That he was preeminently 
skilled in the Greek language is evident from the fact that, a few- 
years after he left the university, he was invited by Sir John Cheke to 
become preceptor in the learned languages to Elizabeth, which office 
he discharged for two years with great credit and satisfaction to him- 
self, as well as to his illustrious pupil. Soon after this he went abroad, 
and remained about three years in Germany. On his return, he was 
selected to fill the office of Latin secretary to Edward VI. , but on the 
death of the king he retui'ned to the university. On the accession of 
Elizabeth, he was immediately distinguished, and read with the queen 
some hours every day in the Latin and Greek languages. In this 
office, and in that of Latin secretary, he continued at court for the 
remainder of his life. He died in 1568, at the age of fifty-three. 

Characterization 

It would perhaps have surprised Roger Ascham, the scholar of a 
learned age, and a Greek professor, that the history of English litera- 
tui'e might open with his name ; for in his English writings he had 
formed no pi*emeditated work designed for posterity as well as his own 
times. The subjects he has written on were solely suggested by the 
occasion, and incurred the slight of the cavilers of his day, who had 
not yet learned that humble titles may conceal performances which 
exceed their promise, and that trifles cease to be trivial in the work- 
manship of genius. An apology for a favorite recreation, that of 
archery, for his indulgence in which hi§ enemies, and sometimes his 

13 



14 BOGEE AS CHAM 

friends, reproached the truant of academic Greek ; an account of 
affairs of Germany, while employed as secretary to the English 
embassy; and the posthumous treatise of the " Scholemaster," origi- 
nating in an accidental conversation at table — constitute the whole of 
the claims of Ascham to the rank of an English classic, a degree much 
higher than was obtained by the learning of Sir Thomas Elyot and the 
genius of Sir Thomas More. ... 

The mind of Ascham was stored with all the wealth of ancient litera- 
ture the nation possessed. Ascham was proud, when alluding to his 
master, the learned Cheke, and to his royal pupil, Queen Elizabeth, of 
having been the pupil of the greatest scholar, and a preceptor to the 
greatest pupil in England ; but we have rather to admire the intrepid- 
ity of his genius which induced him to avow the noble design of set- 
ting an example of composing in our vernacular idiom. He tells us 
in his "Toxophilus," " I write this English matter in the English lan- 
guage, for Englishmeia." He introduced an easy and natural style in 
English prose, instead of the pedantry of the unformed taste of his 
day, and adopted, as he tells us, the counsel of Aristotle, ' ' to speak as 
the common people do, to think as the wise men do." 

"The Scholemaster," with its humble title, "to teach children to 
understand, write, and speak the Latin tongue," conveys an erroneous 
notion of the delight and the knowledge which may be drawn from 
this treatise, notwithstanding that the work remains incomplete, for 
there are references to parts which do not appear in the work itself. 
' ' The Scholemaster " is a classical production in English, which may 
be placed by the side of its gi'eat Latin rivals, the Orations of Cicero and 
the Institutes of Quintilian. It is enlivened by interesting details. The 
first idea of the work was started in a real conversation at table, among 
some eminent personages, on occasion of the flight of some scholars 
from Eton College, driven away by the iron rod of the master. " Was 
the school-house to be a house of bondage and fear, or a house of play 
and pleasure ? " During the progress of the work the author lost his 
patron and incurred other disappointments. He has consigned all his 
variable emotions to this volume. The accidental interview with Lady 
Jane Grey ; his readings with Queen Elizabeth, in their daily inter- 
course with the fine writers of antiquity, and their recreations at the 
regal game of chess — for such was the seduction of Attic learning, that 
the queen on the throne felt a happiness in again becoming a pupil of 
her old master — these and similar instances present those individual 
touches of the writer which give such a reality to an author's feel- 
ings. 

The works of Ascham, which are collected in a single volume, 
remain for the gratification of those who preserve a pure taste for the 



EXTRACTS FROM " TOXOPmLVS" 15 

pristine simplicity of our ancient writers. His native English, that 
English which we have lost, but which we are ever delighted to recover 
after nearly three centuries, is still critical without pedantry, and beau- 
tiful without ornament ; and (which cannot be said of the writings of 
Sir Thomas Elyot and Sir Thomas More) the volume of Ascham is 
indispensable in every English library whose possessor in any way 
aspires to connect together the progress of taste and of opinion in our 
country. Isaac D'Israeli. 

The " Toxophilus "' is, as its name imports, a treatise upon archery; 
and the main design of Ascham in writing it was to apologize for the 
zeal with which he studied and practiced the art of shooting, and to 
show the honor and dignity of the art in all nations and at all times, 
and its acknowledged utility not only in matters of war, but as an inno- 
cent and engaging pastime in times of peace. The whole work is in 
the dialogue form, the speakers being Toxophilus, a lover of archery, 
and Philologus, a student. 

The work goes fully into the practical part of the art, so that the 
" Schole for Shootinge" is a complete manual of archery, containing 
not only a learned history of the art, and the highest encomiums on its 
excellence and utility, but likewise the most minute practical details, 
even down to the species of goose from the wing of which the best 
feathers are to be plucked for the shaft. 

Charles D. Cleveland. 

Extracts from " Toxophilus " 

1. The Value of Eecreation . 

Philologus. How much is to be given to the authority 
either of Aristotle or Tully^ I cannot tell.; this I am sure, 
which thing this fair wheat (God save it) maketh me remember, 
that those husbandmen which rise earliest, and come latest 
home, and are content to have their dinner and other drinkings 
brought into the field to them, for fear of losing of time, have 
fatter barns in harvest than they which will either sleep at 
noon-time of the day, or else make merry with their neighbors 

'From toxon (rozov), a bow, and philos (^zAoj), a friend. The original 
title runs thus : "Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge, conteyned in II Bookes. 
To all Grentlemen and Yomen of Englande, pleasaunte for theyr pastyme to 
rede, and profitable for theyr use to follow ; both in War and Peace." 

^ Cicero 



16 ROGER A8CHAM 

at the ale. And so a scholar that purposeth to be a good hus- 
band/ and desireth to reap and enjoy much fruit of learning, 
must till and sow thereafter. Our best seed time, which be 
scholars, as it is very timely and when we be young, so it 
endureth not over long, and therefore it may not be let slip 
one hour. 

ToxoPHiLUS. For contrariwise, I heard myself a good hus- 
band at his book once say, that to omit study some time of the 
day, and some time of the year, made as much for the increase 
of learning, as to let the land lie some time fallow maketh for 
the better increase of corn. This we see, if the land be 
ploughed every year, the corn cometh thin up ; the ear is short, 
the grain is small, and when it is brought into the barn and 
threshed, giveth very evil fall. ^ So those who never leave 
poring on their books have oftentimes as thin invention as 
other poor men have, and as small wit and weight in it as in 
other men's. And thus your husbandry, methinks, is more like 
the life of a covetous snudge that oft very evil proves, than the 
labor of a good husband, that knoweth well what he doth. 
And surely the best wits to learning must needs have much 
recreation and ceasing from their book, or else they mar them- 
selves ; when base and dumpish wits can never be hurt with 
continual study; as ye see in luting, that a treble minikin 
string must always be let down, but at such time as when a 
man must needs play, when ^ the base and dull string needeth 
never to be moved out of his place. 

2. In Praise of the G-oose 

ToxoPHiLus. Yet well fare the gentle goose, which bringeth 
to a man so many exceeding commodities ! For the goose is 
man's comfort in war and in peace, sleeping and waking. 
What praise soever is given to shooting, the goose may challenge 
the best part of it. How well doth she make a man fare at his table ! 
How easily doth she make a man lie in his bed ! How fit, even 
as her feathers be only for shooting, so be her quills for writing. 
1 husbandman ^ produce ^ whereas 



EXTRACTS FROM T0X0PHILU8 17 

Philologus. Indeed, Toxophile, that is the best praise you 
gave to a goose yet, and surely I would have said you had been 
to blame if you had overskipt it. 

ToxoPHiLus. The Romans, I trow, Philologe, not so much 
because a goose with crying saved their capitolium, with their 
golden Jupiter did make a golden goose, and set her in the top 
of the capitolium, and appointed also the censors to allow, out 
of the common batch, yearly stipends for the finding of certain 
geese ; the Romans did not, I say, give all this honor to a goose 
for that good deed only, but for other infinite mo, ^ which come 
daily to a man by geese ; and surely if I should declaim in the 
praise of any manner of beast living, I would choose a goose. 
But the goose hath made us fiee too far from our matter. 

3. His Apology for Writing in English 

If any man would blame me either for taking such a matter 
in hand, or else for writing it in the English tongue, this 
answer I may make him, that when the best of the realm think 
it honest for them to use, I, one of the meanest sort, ought not 
to suppose it vile for me to write : and though to have written 
it in another tongue had been both more profitable for my 
study, and also more honest for my name, yet I can think my 
labor well bestowed, if with a little hinderance of m}^ profit 
and name may come any furtherance to the pleasure or com- 
modity of the gentlemen and yeomen of England, for whose 
sake I took this matter in hand. And as for the Latin or Greek 
tongue, everything is so excellently done in them, that none 
can do better ; in the English tongue, contrary, everything in 
a manner so meanly, both for the matter and handling, that no 
man can do worse. For therein the least learned, for the most 
part, have been always most ready to write. And they which 
had least hope in Latin have been most bold in English : when 
surely every man that is most ready to talk is not most able to 
write. He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this 
counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think 



18 ROOEE ASCHAM 

as wise men do : as so should every man understand him, and 
the judgment of wise men allow him. Many English writers 
have not done so, but, using strange words, as Latin, French, and 
Italian, do make all things dark and hard. Once I communed 
with a man which reasoned the English tongue to be enriched 
and increased thereby, saying, " Who will not praise that feast 
where a man shall drink at a dinner both wine, ale, and beer ? " 
" Truly (quoth I) they be all good, every one taken by himself 
alone, but if you put malmsey and sack, red wine and white, ale 
and beer, and all in one pot, you shall make a drink neither 
easy to be known, nor yet wholesome for the body." 



Extracts from the " Scholemaster" 

1. Intermixture of Study and Exercise 

I would wish, that beside some good time, fitly appointed, 
and constantly kept, to increase by reading the knowledge of the 
tongues, and learning, young gentlemen should use, and delight 
in all courtly exercises and gentlemanlike pastimes. And good 
cause why : for the self-same noble city of Athens, justly com- 
mended of me before, did wisely, and upon great consideration, 
appoint the muses, Apollo and Pallas, to be patrons of learning 
to their youth. For the muses, besides learning, were also ladies 
of dancing, mirth, and minstrelsy : Apollo was god of shooting, 
and author of cunning playing upon instruments ; Pallas also 
was lady mistress in wars. Whereby was nothing else meant, 
but that learning should be always mingled with honest mirth 
and comely exercises ; and that war also should be governed by 
learning and moderated by wisdom; as did well appear in 
those captains of Athens named by me before, and also in Scipio 
and Csesar, the two diamonds of Rome. And Pallas was no 
more feared in wearing JEgida, than she was praised for choosing 
Olivani ; whereby shineth the glory of learning, which thus was 
governor and mistress, in the noble city of Athens, both of war 
and peace. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE '' 8CE0LEMA8TER'' 19 



2. The Consequences of Neglected Education 

It is pity that, commonly, more care is had, yea, and that 
among very wise men, to find out rather a cunning man for 
their horse, than a cunning man for their children. They say 
nay in word, but they do so in deed. For to the one they will 
gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by year, and loath 
to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God, that sitteth in 
heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their 
liberality as it should ; for he suffereth them to have tame and 
well-ordered horse, but wild and unfortunate children ; and, 
therefore, in the end, they find more pleasure in their horse 
than comfort in their children. 

3. Dangers of Foreign Travel 

I know divers noble personages, and many worthy gentlemen 
of England, whom all the siren songs of Italy could never 
untwine from the mast of God's word ; nor no enchantment of 
vanity overturn them from the fear of God and love of honesty. 

But I know as many, or mo, and some, sometime my dear 
friends (for whose sake I hate going into that country the 
more), who, parting out of England fervent in the love of 
Christ's doctrine,- and well furnished with the fear of God, 
returned out of Italy worse transformed than ever was any in 
Circe's ^ court. I know divers, that went out of England men 
of innocent life, men of excellent learning, who returned out of 
Italy, not only with worse manners, but also with less learning ; 
neither so willing to live orderly, nor yet so able to speak learn- 
edly, as they were at home, before they went abroad. . . . 

But I am afraid that over many of our travelers into Italy 
do not eschew the way to Circe's court, but go, and ride, and 
run, and fly thither ; they make great haste to come to her ; 
they make great suit to serve her ; yea, I could point out some 

1 an enchantress of ancient fable, who first charmed her victims and then 
changed them to beasts 



20 ROGER AS CHAM 

with my finger, that never had gone out of England, but only 
to serve Circe in Italy. ... If you think we judge amiss, 
and write too sore against you, hear what the Italian saith of 
the Englishman ; what th-e master reporteth of the scholar, who 
uttereth plainly what is taught by him, and what is learned by 
you, saying, Inglese Italianato, e un diabolo incarnato : that is to 
say, " you remain men in shape and fashion, but become devils 
in life and condition." 



R. H. Quick's Adaptation from the " Scholemaster" 

If laudari a landaus'^ is any test of merit, we may assume 
that this book is still deserving of attention. " It contains, per- 
haps," says Dr. Johnson, " the best advice that was ever given 
for the study of languages." And Mr. J. E. B. Mayor (no mean 
authority) ventures on a still stronger assertion. " This book 
sets forth," says he, " the only sound method of acquiring a dead 
language.'^ Mr. George Long has also borne witness on the 
same side. 

And yet, I believe, few teachers of the dead languages have 
read Ascham's book, or know the method he j)roposes. I will, 
therefore, give an account of it, as nearly as I can in Ascham's 
own words. 

Latin is to be taught as follows : First, let the child learn the 
eight parts of speech, and then the right joining together of 
substantives with adjectives, the noun with the verb, the rela- 
tive with the antecedent. After the concords are learned, let 
the master take Sturm's selection of Cicero's Epistles, and read 
them after this manner: " First, let him teach the child, cheer- 
fully and plainly, the cause and matter of the letter ; then, let 
him construe it into English so oft as the child may easily carry 
away the understanding of it; lastly, parse it over perfectly. 
This done, then let the child by and by both construe and parse 
it over again ; so that it may appear that the child doubteth in 
nothing that his master has taught him before. 

» to be praised by those who are themselves praised 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION FROM THE " SOHOLEMASTEB'' 21 

" After this, the child must take a paper book, and sitting in 
some place where no man shall prompt him, by himself let 
him translate into English his former lesson. Then showing 
it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, 
and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate 
his own English into Latin again in another paper book. 
When the child bringeth it turned into Latin, the master must 
compare it with TuUy's book, and lay them both together, and 
where the child doth well, praise him, where amiss point out 
why Tully's use is better. 

" Thus the child will easily acquire a knowledge of grammar, 
and also the ground of almost all the rules that are so busily 
taught by the master, and so hardly learned by the scholar in 
all common schools." 

" We do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach rules ; and 
teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly than they be 
commonly taught in common schools. For when the master 
shall compare Tully's book with the scholar's translation, let the 
master at the first lead and teach the scholar to join the rules of 
his grammar book with the examples of his present lesson, until 
the scholar by himself be able to fetch out of his grammar every 
rule for every example ; and let the grammar book be ever in 
the scholar's hand, and also used by him as a dictionary for 
every present use. This is a lively and perfect way of teaching 
of rules; where the common way used in common schools to 
read the grammar alone by itself is tedious for the master, 
hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both." 

And elsewhere Ascham says : " Yea, I do wish that all rules 
for young scholars were shorter than they be. For, without 
doubt, grammatica'^ itself is sooner and surer learned by exam- 
ples of good authors than by the naked rules of grammarians." 

"As you perceive your scholar to go better on away, first, 
with understanding his lesson more quickly, with parsing more 
readily, with translating more speedily and perfectly than he 
was wont; after, give him longer lessons to translate, and, 

' Grammar 



22 ROGER AS CHAM 

withal, begin to teach him, both in nouns and verbs, what is 
'proprium^ and what is translatum- what synonymum,^ what di- 
versum,^ which be contraria^ and which be most notable phrases, 
in all his lectures." . ' . 

Every lesson is to be thus carefully analyzed, and entered 
under these headings in a third MS. book. 

All this time, though the boy is to work over some Terence, 
he is to speak no Latin. Subsequently the master must trans- 
late easy pieces from Cicero into English, and the boy, without 
having seen the original passage, is required to put the English 
into Latin. His translation must then be carefully compared 
with the original, for " of good heed-taking springeth chiefly 
knowledge." 

In the Second Book of the " Scholemaster," Ascham discusses 
the various branches of the study then common, viz. : 1. Trans- 
latio linguarum;^ 2. Paraphrasis;'^ 3. Metaphrasis;^ 4. Epitome;^ 
5. Imitatio ; ^^ 6. Declamatio. " He does not lay much stress on 
any of these, except translatio and imitatio. Of the last he says : 
"All languages, both learned and mother-tongue, be gotten, 
and gotten only by imitation. For, as ye use to hear, so ye use 
to speak ; if ye hear no other, ye speak not yourself; and whom 
ye only hear, of them ye only learn." But translation was his 
great instrument for all kinds of learning. " The translation," 
he says, " is the most common and most commendable of all 
other exercises for youth ; most common, for all your construc- 
tions in grammar schools be nothing else but translations, but 
because they be not double translations (as I do require) they 
bring forth but simple and single commodity; and because 
also they lack the daily use of writing, which is the only thing 
that breedeth deep root, both in the wit for good understanding 
and in the memory for sure keeping of all that is learned; 

' grammatical property ^ free translation 

2 that which is translated * verbal translation 

' that which is synonymous * brief summary 

* that which is different in meaning " imitation 

* expressions directly opposed in meaning " vocal rendering 
® translation of languages 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION FROM THE " SGROLEMASTER'' 23 

most commendable also, and that by the judgment of all authors 
which entreat of these exercises." 

After quoting Pliny, he says: "You perceive how Pliny 
teacheth that by this exercise of double translating is learned 
easily, sensibly, by little and little, not only all the hard 
congruities of grammar, the choice of ablest words, the right 
pronouncing of words and sentences, comeliness of figures, and 
forms fit for every matter and proper for every tongue; but, 
that which is greater also, in marking daily and following 
diligently thus the footsteps of the best authors, like invention 
of arguments, like order in disposition, like utterance in elocu- 
tion, is easily gathered up ; and hereby your scholar shall be 
brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true under- 
standing and rightful judgment, both for writing and speaking." 

Again he says : " For speedy attaining, I durst venture a 
good wager if a scholar in whom is aptness, love, diligence, and 
constancy, w^ould but translate after this sort, some little book 
in Tully (as ' De Senectute,' with two Epistles, the first ' Ad 
Quintum Fratrem,' the other ' Ad Lentulum ') that scholar, I say, 
should come to a better knowledge in the Latin tongue than 
the most part do that spend from five to six years in tossing all 
the rules of grammar in common schools." After quoting the 
instance of Dion Prussseus, who came to great learning and ut- 
terance by reading and following only two books, the "Phsedo^' 
and Demosthenes' " De Falsa Legatione,'^ he goes on : " And a 
better and nearer example herein may be our most noble Queen 
Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her 
hand after the first declining of a noun and a verb ; but only 
by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, 
without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of 
Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath at- 
tained to such a perfect understanding in both the tongues, and 
to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and that with such a 
judgment, as there be few now in both universities or elsewhere 
in England that be in both tongues comparable with Her 
Majesty." Ascham's authority is indeed not conclusiye on this 



24 ROGER A8CEAM 

point, as he, in praising the queen's attainments, was vaunting 
his own success as a teacher, and, moreover, if he flattered her 
he could plead prevailing custom. But we have, I believe, 
abundant evidence that Elizabeth was an accomplished scholar. 

Before I leave Ascham I must make one more quotation, to 
which I shall more than once have occasion to refer. Speaking 
of the plan of double translation, he says : " Ere the scholar 
have construed, parsed, twice translated over by good advise- 
ment, marked out his six points by skilful judgment, he shall 
have necessary occasion to read over every lecture a dozen tiw.es 
at the least; which because he shall do always in order, he shall 
do it always with pleasure. . . . Andpleasureallureth love; 
love hath lust to labor; labor always obtaineth his purpose." 

When we compare Ratich's method with that of Ascham, we 
find that they have much in common. Ratich began the study 
of a language with one book, which he worked over with the 
pupil a great many times. Ascham did the same. Each lec- 
ture, he says, would, according to his plan, be gone over a dozen 
times at the least. Both construed to the pupil, instead of 
requiring him to make out the sense for himself. Both taught 
grammar, not independently, but in connection with the model 
book. So far as the two methods diifered, I have no hesitation 
in pronouncing Ascham's the better. It gave the pupil more to 
do, and contained the very important element, writing. By this 
means there was a chance of the interest of the pupil surviving 
the constant repetition, but Ratich's pupils must have been bored 
to death. His plan of making them familiar with the transla- 
tion first, was subsequently advocated by Comenius, and may 
have advantages, but in efiect the pupil would be tired of the 
play before he began to translate it. Then Ratich's plan of 
going through and through seems very inferior to that of thor- 
oughly mastering one lesson before going on to the next. I 
should say that whatever merit there was in Ratich's plan, lay 
in its insisting on complete knowledge of a single book, and 
that this knowledge would be much better attained by Ascham's 
practice of double translation. 



JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIERE 

1622-1672 

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born at Paris in 1622. From childliood 
he was drawn irresistibly toward the stage. When scarcely more than 
an infant, he found his chief delight in accompanying his grandfather 
to witness the plays of Corneille, at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Poque- 
lin was destined by his parents for the legal profession. He entered 
college, and was an enthusiastic and ambitious student. With great 
self-reliance he organized a theatrical company, when his college days 
were ended, and opened the Theatre Illustre in his native city. It was 
a mortifying failure, and Poquelin was imprisoned for debt. On re- 
gaining his freedom he disappeared from view at the capital. Twelve 
years later he returned under a new name — Moliere — destined to be 
imperishable in letters. In the interval he had learned much of wis- 
dom and of the art of the playwright. His star was now in the 
ascendant. He wrote, in all, about thirty plays, nearly all of which 
enjoyed a high measure of success. 

His best productions are "The Misanthrope" {Le Misanthrope) , 
" Learned Women " (Les Femmes Savantes), " The Miser" {L^Avare), 
and " The Hypocrite " (Le Tartufe), which are regarded as models of 
high comedy. "The Shopkeeper turned Gentleman" (Le Bourgeois) 
is one of his most popular dramas. Mr. Charles Heron Wall, the 
translator of Moliere, says of this play : " ie Bourgeois Gentilhomme 
was acted before the king for the first time at Chambord, on October 
14, 1670, and on November 23, at the Palais Royal. After the second 
representation, Louis XIV. said to Moliere : ' You have never written 
anything which amused me more, and your play is excellent.' But it 
obtained a still greater success in Paris, where the bourgeois willingly 
and good-humoredly laughed at what they deemed their neighbors' 
weaknesses. The first three acts are the best; Louis XIV. hurried 
Moliere so with the last that they degenerated into burlesque. Moliere 
acted the part of Bourgeois." 

Moliere died in 1672. 

Characterization 

Moliere, the noblest heart, the most illustrious soul, the greatest 
writer, the grandest philosopher of France, in the seventeenth century, 
and of the whole world in all time ; Moliere, whose life was so beauti- 

25 



26 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POQUELIN MOLIERE 

f ul, whose knowledge was so wide, whose benevolence was so deep ; 
Moliere, the first literary man of France who realized his worth, and 
lived and was enriched by his g-enius, has been dead a hundred and 
fifty years, yet he remains the most youthful, the liveliest, the truest 
of the great writers of France. 

Jules Janin. 

Moliere is the most distinguished comic poet of modern times. 
While he is the complete embodiment of the spirit of his people, he 
yet rises, independent of all prejudices of nation and age, to the 
plane of the true great author. His bust, standing in the hall of the 
French Academy, bears the triumphant inscription : 

" Hien ne manque d sa gloire; il nianquait a la notre.'''' ' 

Prof. A. H. Mixer. 



The Education of M. Jourdain 

Scenes from " Le Bourgeois " — " The Shopkeeper turned Gentleman " 

Dramatis Personje 

M. Jourdain, the Shop-keeper turned Gentleman. 

Professor of Philosophy. 
Dancing Master. 
Fencing Master. 
Music Master. 
Servants. 

Madame Jourdain. 
Nicole, a Female Servant. 

The Scene is in Paris, in the Residence of M. Jourdain. 

ACT II 
Scene III. — m. jourdain, fencing master, music master, 

DANCING master, A SERVANT HOLDING TWO FOILS. 

Fen. Mas. {Taking the two foUsfrom the hands of the servant, and 
giving one to M. Jourdain) Now, sir, the salute. The body 
upright, resting slightly on the left thigh. The legs not so far 

> " Nothing is lacking in his glory; he is lacking to ours," 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOURDAIN 27 

apart ; the feet in a line. The wrist in a line with the thigh. 
The point of the foil opposite the shoulder. The arm not quite 
so much extended. The left hand as high as the eye. The left 
shoulder more squared. The head erect ; the look firm. Ad- 
vance, the body steady. Engage my blade in quart, and retain 
the engagement. One, two. As you were. Once more, with 
the foot firm. One, two; a step to the rear. When you make 
an attack, sir, the sword should move first, and the body be 
well held back. One, two. Engage my blade in tierce, and 
retain the engagement. Advance ; the body steady. Advance ; 
one, two. Recover. Once more. One, two. A step to the rear. 
On guard, sir; on guard. {The Fencing Master delivers two or 
three attacks, calling out, " On guard ! ") 

M. Jour. Ah ! 

Mus. Mas. You are doing wonders. 

Fen. Mas. As I have already told you, the whole art of fenc- 
ing consists of one or two things — in giving and not receiving ; 
and, as I showed you the other day by demonstrative reason, it 
is impossible for you to receive if you know how to turn aside 
your adversary's weapon from the line of your body ; and this 
again depends only on a slight movement of the wrist to the 
inside or the out. 

M. Jour. So that a man, without having any courage, is sure 
of killing his man and of not being killed himself. 

Fen. Mas. Exactly. Did you not see plainly the demonstra- 
tion of it ? 

M. Jour. Yes. 

Fen. Mas. And this shows you of what importance we must 
be in a state; and how much the science of arms is superior to 
all the other useless sciences, such as dancing, music 

Dan. Mas. Gently, Mr. Fencing Master ; speak of dancing 
with respect, if you please. 

Mus. Mas. Pray learn to treat more properly the excellence 
of music. 

Fen. Mas. Just see the man of importance ! 

Dan. Mas. A fine animal, to be sure, with his plastron. 



28 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POQUELIN MOLIEBE 

Fen. Mas. Take care, my little dancing master, or I shall 
make you dance in fine style. And you, my little musician, I'll 
teach you to sing out. 

Dan. Mas. And you; my beater of iron, I'll teach you your 
trade. 

M. Jour. {To the Dancing Master?) Are you mad, to go and 
quarrel with a man who understands tierce and quart, and 
knows how to kill another by demonstrative reason? 

Dan. Mas. I don't care a straw for his demonstrative reason, 
and his tierce and quart. 

M. Jour. ( To the Dancing Master) Gently, I tell you. 

Fen. Mas. {To the Dancing Master) How, you little im- 
pudent fellow ! 

M. Jour. Ah, my Fencing Master ! 

Dan. Mas. {To the Fencing Master) How, you great cart- 
horse ! 

M. Jour. Stop, my Dancing Master ! 

Fen. Mas. If I once begin with you 

M. Jour. {To the Fencing Master) Gently. 

Dan. Mas. If I lay my hand upon you 

M. Jour. Softly. 

Fen. Mas. I will beat you after such a fashion 

M. Jour. ( To the Fencing Master) For goodness sake ! 

Dan. Mas. I'll thrash you in such a style 

M. Jour. ( To the Dancing Master) I beg of you 



Mus. Mas. Let us teach him a little how to behave himself. 
M. Jour. ( To the Music Master) Gracious heavens ! Do 
stop. 

Scene IV. — professor of philosophy, m. jourdain, music 

MASTER, DANCING MASTER, FENCING MASTER, A SERVANT. 

M. Jour. Oh ! you are in the very nick of time with your 
philosophy. Pray come here and restore peace among these 
people. 

Prof. Phil. What is going on ? What is the matter, gentle- 
men? 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOUBDAIN 29 

M. Jour. They have got themselves into such a rage about 
the importance that ought to be attached to their different pro- 
fessions, that they have ahnost come to blows over it. 

Prof. Phil. For shame, gentlemen ; how can you thus for- 
get yourselves ? Have you not read the learned treatise which 
Seneca composed on anger ? Is there anything more base and 
more shameful than the passion which changes a man into a 
Savage beast, and ought not reason to govern all our actions? 

Dan. Mas. How, sir ! He comes and insults us both in our 
professions; he desj)ises dancing, which I teach, and music, 
which is his occupation (pointing to Music Master). 

Prof. Phil. A wise man is above all the insults that can be 
offered him ; and the best and noblest answer one can make to 
all kinds of provocation is moderation and patience. 

Fen. Mas. They have both the impertinence to compare their 
professions to mine! 

Prof. Phil. Why should this offend you ? It is not for vain- 
glory and rank that men should strive among themselves. 
What distinguishes one man from another is wisdom and 
virtue. 

Dan. Mas. I maintain that dancing is a science which we 
cannot honor too much. 

Mus. Mas. And I that music is a science which all ages have 
revered. 

Fen. Mas. And I maintain against them both that the 
science of attack and defence is the best and most necessary of 
all sciences. 

Prof. Phil. And for what, then, do you count philosophy? 
I think you are all three very bold fellows, to dare to speak 
before me with this arrogance, and impudently to give the 
name of science to things which are not even to be honored 
with the name of art, but which can only be classed with the 
trades of prize-fighter, street-singer, and mountebank. 

Fen. Mas. Get out, you dog of a philosopher ! 

Mus. Mas. Get along with you, you beggarly pedant ! 

Dan. Mas. Begone, you empty-headed college scout ! 



30 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POQUELIN MOLIERE 

Prop. Phil. How, scoundrels that you are! 

{The Philosopher rushes upon them, and they all three belabor 
him.) 

M. Jour. Mr. Philosopher ! 
Peof. Phil. Infamous villains! 
M. Jour. Mr. Philosopher ! 
Fen. Mas. Plague take the animal ! 
M. Jour. Gentlemen ! 
Prop. Phil. Impudent cads ! 
M. Jour. Mr. Philosopher ! 
Dan. Mas. Deuce take the saddled donkey! 
M, Jour. Gentlemen! 
Prop. Phil. Scoundrels! 
M. Jour. Mr. Philosopher! 
Mps. Mas. Perdition take the insolent fellow ! 
MI^our. Gentlemen ! 

Prop. Phil. Knaves, beggars, wretches, impostors ! 
M. Jour. Mr. Philosopher ! Gentlemen ! Mr. Philosopher ! 
Gentlemen ! Mr. Philosopher ! 

Scene V. — m. jourdain, a servant. 

M. Jour. Well! fight as much as you like, I can't help it; 
but don't expect me to go and spoil my dressing-gown to sepa- 
rate you. I should be a fool indeed to trust myself among them, 
and receive some blow or other that might hurt me. 

Scene VI. — professor op philosophy, m. jourdain, a servant. 

Prof. Phil. (Setting his collar in order.) Now for our lesson. 

M. Jour. Ah, sir, how sorry I am for the blows they have 
given you ! 

Prof. Phil. It is of no consequence. A Philosopher knows 
how to receive things calmly, and I shall compose against 
them a satire, in the style of Juvenal, which will cut them up 
in proper fashion. Let us drop this subject. What do you 
wish to learn ? 

M. Jour. Everything I can, for I have the greatest desire in 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOURDAIN 31 

the world to be learned ; and it vexes me more than I can tell 
that my father and mother did not make me learn thoroughly- 
all the sciences when I was young. 

Prop. Phil. This is a praiseworthy feeling. Nam sine doc- 
trina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand this, and you 
have, no doubt, a knowledge of Latin? 

M. Jour. Yes ; but act as if I had none. Explain to me the 
meaning of it. 

Prof. Phil. The meaning of it is this, that without science 
life is an image of death. 

M. Jour. That Latin is quite right. 

Prof. Phil. Have you any principles, any rudiments of 
science ? 

M. Jour. Oh, yes ; I can read and write. 

Prof. Phil. With what would you like to begin ? Shall I 
teach you logic? 

M. Jour. And what may this logic be ? 

Prof. Phil. It is that which teaches us the three operations 
of the mind. 

M. Jour. What are they, those three operations of the mind? 

Prof. Phil. The first, the second, and the third. The first 
is to conceive well by means of universals ; the second, to judge 
well by means of categories ; and the third, to draw a conclu- 
sion aright by means of the figures Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Bar- 
alipton, etc. 

M. Jour. Pooh ! what repulsive words. This logic does not 
by any means suit me. Teach me something more enlivening. 

Prof. Phil. Will you learn moral philosophy ? 

M. Jour. Moral philosophy? 

Prof. Phil. Yes. 

M. Jour. What does it say, this moral philosophy ? 

Prof. Phil. It treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate 
their passions, and 

M. Jour. No, none of that. I am infernally hot-tempered, 
and, morality or no morality, I like to give full vent to my 
anger whenever I have a mind to it. 



32 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POQUELIN MOLIEBE 

Peop. Phil. Would you like to learn physics? 

M. Jour. And what have physics to say for themselves ? 

Prof. Phil. Physics are that science which explains the 
principles of natural things and the properties of bodies, 
which discourses of the nature of the elements of metals, 
minerals, stones, plants, and animals ; which teaches us the 
cause of all the meteors, the rainbow, the ignis fatuus, comets, 
lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, wind, and 
whirlwinds. 

M. Jour. There is too much hullaballoo in all that; too 
much riot and rumpus. 

Prof. Phil. What would you have me teach you, then ? 

M. Jour. Teach me spelling. 

Prof. Phil. Very good. 

M. Jour. Afterward you will teach me the almanac, so that 
I may know when there is a moon, and when there isn't one. 

Prof. Phil. Be it so. In order to give a right interpretation 
of your thought, and to treat this matter philosophically, we 
must begin, according to the order of things, with an exact 
knowledge of the nature of the letters, and the different way 
in which each is pronounced. And on this head, I must tell 
you that letters are divided into vowels, so called because they 
express the voice, and into consonants, so called because they 
are sounded with the vowels, and only mark the different 
articulations of the voice. There are five vowels, ^ or voices, 
a, e, i, 0, u. 

M. Jour. I understand all that. 

Prof. Phil. The vowel a is formed by opening the mouth 
wide; a. 

M. Jour. A, a; yes. 

Prof. Phil. The vowel e is formed by drawing the lower 
jaw a little nearer to the upper ; a, e. 

M. Jour. A, e ; a, e ; to be sure. Ah ! how beautiful that is ! 

Prof. Phil. And the vowel i by bringing the jaws still 

' The vowels here described are the French vowels. The descriptions do not 
apply to the English sounds of the letters. 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOURDAIN 33 

closer to one another, and stretching the two corners of the 
mouth toward the ears ; a, e, i. 

M. Jour. A, e, i, i, i, i. Quite true. Long live science ! 

Prof. Phil. The vowel o is formed by opening the jaws 
and drawing in the lips at the two corners, the upper and the 
lower; o. 

M. Jour. 0, o. Nothing can be more correct ; a, e, i, o, i, o. 
It is admirable ! I, o, i, o. 

Prof. Phil. The opening of the mouth exactly makes a 
little circle, which resembles an o. 

M. Jour. 0, o, o. You are right. ! Ah, what a fine 
thing it is to know something ! 

Prof. Phil. The vowel u is formed by bringing the teeth 
near each other without entirely joining them, and thrusting 
out both the lips, whilst also bringing them near together 
without joining them ; u. 

M. Jour. XJ, u. There is nothing more true ; u. 

Prof. Phil. Your two lips lengthen as if you were pouting ; 
so that, if you wish to make a grimace at anybody, and to 
laugh at him, you have only to u him. 

M. Jour. V, u. It's true. Oh, that I had studied when I 
was younger, so as to know all this ! 

Prof. Phil. To-morrow we will speak of the other letters, 
which are the consonants. 

M. Jour. Is there anything as curious in them as in these ? 

Prof. Phil. Certainly. For instance, the consonant d is 
pronounced by striking the tip of the tongue above the upper 
teeth ; da. 

M. Jour. Da, da. Yes. Ah, what beautiful things, what 
beautiful things ! 

Prof. Phil. The /, by pressing the upper teeth upon the 
lower lip ; Ja. 

M. Jour. Fa, fa. 'Tis the truth. Ah, my father and my 
mother, how angry I feel with you ! 

Prof. Phil. And the r, by carrying the tip of the tongue up 
to the roof of the palate, so that, being grazed by the air which 

S. M. — 3 



34 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POqUELIN MOLIEBE 

comes out by force, it yields to it, and, returning to the same 
place, causes a sort of tremor ; r, ra. 

M. Jour. R-r-ra; r-r-r-r-r-ra. That's true. Ah, what a 
clever man you are, and what time I have lost! R-r-ra. 

Prof. Phil. I will fully explain all these curiosities to you. 

M. Jour. Pray do. And now I want to intrust you with a 
great secret. I am in love with a lady of quality, and I should 
be glad if you will help me to write something to her in a short 
letter which I mean to drop at her feet. 

Prof. Phil. Very well. 

M. Jour. That will be gallant ; will it not ? 

Prof. Phil. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her? 

M. Jour. Oh, no ; not verse. 

Prof. Phil. You only wish for prose ? 

M. Jour. No. I wish for neither verse nor prose. 

Prof. Phil. It must be one or the other. 

M. Jour. Why? 

Prof. Phil. Because, sir, there is nothing by which we can 
express ourselves, excejDt prose or verse. 

M. Jour. There is nothing but prose or verse ? 

Prof. Phil. No, sir. Whatever is not prose is verse ; and 
whatever is not verse is prose. 

M. Jour. And when we speak, what is that, then ? 

Prof. Phil. Prose. 

M. Jour. What ! When I say, " Nicole, bring me my slip- 
pers, and give me my night-cap," is that prose ? 

Prof. Phil. Yes, sir. 

M. Jour. Upon my word, I have been speaking prose these 
forty years without being aware of it; and I am under the 
greatest obligation to you for informing me of it. Well, then, 
I wish to write to her in a letter. Fair Marchioness, your beauti- 
ful eyes make me die of love ; but I would have this worded in 
a genteel manner, and turned prettily. 

Prof. Phil. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your 
heart to ashes; that you suffer day and night for her tor- 
tures 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOUBDAIN 35 

M. Jour. No, no, no ; I don't want any of that. I simply 
wish for what I tell you. Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes 
make me die of love. 

Prof. Phil. Still, you might amplify the thing a little. 

M. Jour. No, I tell you, I will have nothing but those words 
in the letter ; but they must be put in a fashionable way, and 
arranged as they should be. Pray show me a little, so that I 
may see the different ways in which they may be put. 

Prof. Phil. They may be put, first of all, as you have said, 
Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love ; or else, 
Of love die make me, fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes; or. 
Your beautiful eyes of love make me, fair Marchioness, die ; or, Die 
of love your beautiful eyes, fair Marchioness, make me ; or else, Me 
make your beautiful eyes die, fair Marchioness, of love. 

M. Jour. But of all these ways which is the best ? 

Prof. Phil. The one you said. Fair Marchioness, your beauti- 
ful eyes make me die of love. 

M. Jour. Yet I have never studied, and I did all that right 
off at the first shot. I thank you with all my heart, and I beg 
of you to come to-morrow morning early. 

Prof. Phil, I shall not fail. 



ACT III 
Scene I. — m. jourdain, two lackeys. 

M. Jour. Follow me, that I may go and show my clothes 
about the town ; and be very careful, both of you, to walk close 
to my heels, so that people may see that you belong to me. 

Lack. Yes, sir. 

M. Jour. Just call Nicole. I have some orders to give her. 
You need not move ; here she comes. 

Scene II. — m. jourdain, nicole, two lackeys. 

M. Jour. Nicole ! 
Nic. What is it, sir ? 



36 JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIEBE 

M. Jour. Listen. 

Nic. {Laughing) Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi ! 

M, Jour. What are you laughing at ? 

Nic. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. Wliat does the hussy mean ? 
' Nic. Hi, hi, hi ! What a figure you cut ! Hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. Eh? What? 

Nic. Ah, ah ! My goodness ! Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. What an impertinent jade ! Are you laughing at 
me? 

Nic. Oh, no, sir ! I should be very sorry to do so. Hi, hi, hi, 
hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. I'll slap your face if you laugh again. 

Nic. I can't help it, sir. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi ! - 

M. Jour. Will you leave off? 

Nic. Sir ; I beg your pardon, sir ; but you are so very comical 
that I can't help laughing. • Hi, hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. Did you ever see such impudence? 

Nic. You are so odd, like that. Hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. I'll 

Nic. I beg of you to excuse me. Hi, hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. Look here; if you laugh again, ever so little, I swear 
I will give you a box on the ears such as you never had before 
in your life. 

Nic. Well, sir, I have done. I won't laugh any more. 

M. Jour. Mind you don't. You must for this afternoon 
clean 

Nic. Hi, hi! 

M. Jour. You must clean thoroughly 

Nic. Hi, hi! 



M. Jour. You must, I say, clean the drawing-room, and 

Nic. Hi, hi! 

M. Jour. Again? 

Nic. {Tumbling down with laughing) There, sir, beat me 
rather, but let me laugh to my heart's content. I am sure it 
will be better for me. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi ! 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOURDAIK 37 

M. Jour. I am boiling with rage. 

Nic. For pity's sake let me laugh. Hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. If I begin 

Nic. Si-r-r, I shall bur-r-st if I d-don't laugh. Hi, hi, hi ! 

M. Jour. But did you ever see such a hussy ? She comes and 
laughs at me to my face, instead of tending to my orders. 

Nic. What is it you wish me to do, sir ? 

M. Jour. I want you to get this house ready for the company 
which is to come here by and by. 

Nic. ( Getting up) Ah, well ! All my wish to laugh is gone 
now ; your company brings such disorder here that what you 
say is quite sufficient to put me out of temper. 

M. Jour. I suppose that, to please you, I ought to shut my 
door against everybody ? 

Nic. You would do well to shut it against certain people, sir. 

Scene III. — mme. jourdain, m. jourdain, nicole, two 

SERVANTS. 

Mme. Jour. Ah, me ! Here is some new vexation ! Why, hus- 
band, what do you possibly mean by this strange get-up ? Have 
you lost your senses, that you go and deck yourself out like this, 
and do you wish to be the laughing-stock of everybody, wher- 
ever you go ? 

M. Jour. Let me tell you, my good wife, that no one but a 
fool will laugh at me. 

Mme. Jour. No one has waited until to-day for that ; and it 
is now some time since your ways of going on have been the 
amusement of everybody. 

M. Jour. And who may everybody be, please? 

Mme. Jour. Everybody is a body who is in the right, and who 
has more sense than you. For my part, I am quite shocked at 
the life you lead. I don't know our home again. One would 
think, by what goes on, that it was one everlasting carnival 
here ; and as soon as day breaks, for fear we should have any 
rest in it, we have a regular din of fiddles and singers, that are a 
positive nuisance to all the neighborhood. 



38 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POQUELIN MOLIEBE 

Nic. What mistress says is quite right. There is no longer 
any chance of having the house clean, with all that heap of 
people you bring in. Their feet seem to have gone purposely to 
pick up the mud in the four quarters of the town, in order to 
bring it here afterward ; and poor Franyoise is almost off her 
legs with the constant scrubbing of the floors, which your mas- 
ters come and dirty every day as regular as clockwork. 

M. JouK. I say, there, our servant Nicole, you have a pretty 
sharp tongue of your own for a country wench. 

Mme. Jour. Nicole is right, and she has more sense by far 
than you have. I should like to know, for instance, what do 
you mean to do with a dancing master at your age ? 

Nic. And with that big fencing master who comes here 
stamping enough to shake the whole house down, and to tear up 
the floor tiles of our rooms. 

M. Jour. Gently, my servant and my wife. 

Mme. Jour. Do you mean to learn dancing for the time when 
you can't stand on your legs any longer ? 

Nic. Do you intend to kill anybody ? 

M. Jour. Hold your tongues, I say. You are only ignorant 
women, both of you, and understand nothing concerning the 
prerogative of all this. 

Mme. Jour. You would do much better to think of seeing 
your daughter married, for she is now of an age to be provided for. 

M. Jour. I shall think of seeing my daughter married when 
a suitable match presents itself; but in the mean time, I wish to 
think of acquiring fine learning. 

Nic. I have heard say also, mistress, that, to go the whole hog, 
he has now taken a professor of philosophy. 

M. Jour. To be sure I have. I wish to be clever, and reason 
concerning things with people of quality. 

Mme. Jour. Had you not better go to school one of these 
days, and get the birch, at your age ? 

M. Jour. Why not ? Would to Heaven I were flogged this 
very instant, before all the world, so that I might know all they 
learn at schooL 



THE EDUCATION OF M. JOUEDAm 39 

Nic. Yes, to be sure. That would much improve the shape of 
your leg. 

M. Jour. Of course. 

Mme. Jour. And all this is very necessary for the manage- 
ment of your house ? 

M. Jour. Certainly. You both speak like donkeys, and I am 
ashamed of your ignorance. {To Mme. Jourdain.) Let me see, 
for instance, if you know what you are speaking this very 
moment. 

Mme. Jour. Yes, I know that what I speak is rightly spoken ; 
and that you should think of leading a different life. 

M. Jour. I do not mean that. I ask you what the words are 
that you are now speaking. 

Mme. Jour. They are sensible words, I tell you, and that is 
more than your conduct is. 

M. Jour. I am not speaking of that. I ask you what it is 
that I am now saying to you. That which I am now speaking 
to you, what is it ? 

Mme. Jour. Rubbish. 

M. Jour. No, no ! I don't mean that. What we both speak ; 
the language we are speaking this very moment. 

Mme. Jour. Well? 

M. Jour. How is it called ? 

Mme. Jour. It is called whatever you like to call it. 

M. Jour. It is prose, you ignorant woman ! 

Mme. Jour. Prose? 

M. Jour. Whatever is prose is not verse, and whatever is 
not verse is prose. There ! you see what it is to study. (To 
Nicole.) And you, do you even know what you must do to say u ? 

Nic. Eh? What? 

M. Jour. Yes. What do you do when you say u ? 

Nic. What I do? 

M. Jour. Say u a little, to try. 

Nic. Well, u. 

M. Jour. What is it you do ? 

Nic. I say u. 



40 JEAN-BAPTI8TE POQUELIN MOLIERE 

M. Jour. Yes ; but when you say u, what is it you do ? 

Nic. I do what you ask me to do. 

M. Jour. Oh, what a strange thing it is to have to do with 
dunces ! You pout your lips outwards, and bring your upper 
jaw near your lower jaw like this, u; 1 make a face; u. Do you 
see? 

Nic. Yes, that's beautiful. 

Mme. Jour. It's admirable. 

M. Jour. What would you say then if you had seen o, and 
da, da, and Ja, fa f 

Mme. Jour. What is all this absurd stuff? 

Nic. And what are we the better for all this ? 

M. Jour. I have no patience with such ignorant women. 



JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

1712-1 778 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, a paradox of moralists, a strange compound 
of the best and the worst in human nature, was born in Geneva, Switz- 
erland, in 1712. He was the son of a barber and dancing master, and 
was bereaved of his mother soon after his birth. Running away, at 
the age of sixteen, from the master to whom he was apprenticed, he 
wandered about for a time, and then found a home with an eccentric 
widow, Madame de Warens, at Auncey, in whose household he re- 
mained for a number of years. Rousseau was a teacher of music, 
successively at Lyons and in Paris. In the latter city he joined his 
fortunes with those of Louise le Vasseur, a coarse and ignorant seam- 
stress. He soon became famous at Paris as a critic and essayist. He 
sent his children at birth to the hospital for foundlings. Years later, 
repenting of their conduct, he and Louise sought in vain to find them. 

In 1754, Rousseau returned to Geneva, and became again a Protestant 
(for he had embraced Catholicism while in France), but soon returned 
to the vicinity of Paris, where a home had been presented to him by a 
friend. Hei'e he wrote three famous books — "The New Heloise," 
" The Social Contract," and " Emile." The last-named work was con- 
demned by the authorities, both in Catholic France and in Protestant 
Geneva, and an order was issued for the author's arrest. He fled to 
Germany, but was there in imminent danger. He repaired to England, 
where he was well received. Here he wrote his first "Confessions" 
(which alienated most of his remaining friends) ; and he then became 
a wanderer. He died suddenly, near Paris, in 1778, and is believed by 
many to have committed suicide. 

Characterization 

In education, as in politics, no school of thinkers has succeeded or 
can succeed in engrossing all truth to itself. No party, no individual 
even, can take up a central position between the conservatives and 
radicals, and, judging everything on its own merits, try to preserve 
that only which is worth preserving, and to destroy just that which is 
worth destroying. Nor do we find that judicial minds often exercise 
the greatest influence in these matters. The only force which can 

41 



42 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

overcome the vis inertice ' of use and wont is enthusiasm, and this, 
springing from the discovery of new truths and hatred of old abuses, 
can hardly exist with due respect for tnith that has become common- 
place, and usage which is easily confounded with corruptions that 
disfigure it. So advances are made somewhat after this manner: the 
reformer, urged on by his enthusiasm, attacks use and wont with more 
spirit than discretion ; those who are wedded to things as they are, 
try to draw attention from the weak points of their system to the 
mistakes or extravagances of the reformer. In the end, both sides are 
benefited by the encounter; and when their successors carry on the 
contest, they differ as much from those whose causes they espouse as 
from each other. 

In this way we have already made great progress. Compare, for 
instance, our present teaching of grammar with the ancient method, 
and our short and bi'oken school-time with the old plan of keeping 
boys in for five consecutive hours twice a day. Our conservatives 
and reformers are not so much at variance as their predecessors. To 
convince ourselves of this we have only to consider the state of parties 
in the second half of the last century. On the one side, we find the 
schoolmasters who turned out the courtiers of Louis XV. ; on the 
other, the most extravagant, the most eloquent, the most reckless of 
innovators — J. J. Rousseau. 

Rousseau has told us that he resolved on having fixed principles by 
the time he was forty years old. Among the principles of which he 
accordingly laid in a stock, were these : 1st, Man, as he might be, is 
perfectly good- 2d, Man, as he is, is utterly bad. To maintain these 
opinions, Rousseau undertook to show not only the rotten state of the 
existing society, which he did with notable success, but also the proper 
method of rearing children so as to make them all that they ought to 
be — an attempt at construction which was far more diificult and haz- 
ardous than his philippics. 

This was the origin of the "Emile," perhaps the most influential 
book ever written on the subject of education. R. H. Quick. 



R. H. Quick's Adaptation and Summary of "Emile" 

The school to which Rousseau belonged may be said, indeed, 
to have been founded by Montaigne, and to have me'^^ with a 
champion, though not a very enthusiastic champion, in Locke. 
But it was reserved for Rousseau to give this theory of educa- 

' inertia 



qUIGE' 8 ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF "EMILE" 43 

tion its complete development, and to expound it in the clear- 
est and most eloquent language. In the form in which Rousseau 
left it the theory greatly influenced Basedow and Pestalozzi, 
and still influences many educational reformers who differ from 
Rousseau as much as our schoolmasters differ from those of 
Louis XV. 

Of course, as man was corrupted by ordinary education, the 
ideal education must differ from it in every respect. " Take the 
road directly opposite to that which is in use, and you will 
almost always do right." This was the fundamental maxim. 
So thorough a radical was Rousseau, that he scorned the idea 
of half measures. " I had rather follow the established practice 
entirely," says he, " than adopt a good one by halves." 

In the society of that time everything was artificial ; Rousseau 
therefore demanded a return to nature. Parents should do 
their duty in rearing their own offspring. " Where there is no 
mother, there can be no child." The father should find time 
to bring up the child whom the mother has suckled. No duty 
can be more important than this. But although Rousseau 
seems conscious that family life is the natural state, he makes 
his model child an orphan, and hands him over to a governor, 
to be brought up in the country without companions. 

This governor is to devote himself, for some years, entirely to 
' imparting to his pupil these difficult arts — the art of being 
ignorant and of losing time. Till he is twelve years old Emile 
is to have no direct instruction whatever. "At that age he 
shall not know what a book is," says Rousseau ; though else- 
where we are told that he will learn to read of his own accord 
by the time he is ten, if no attempt is made to teach him. 
He is to be under no restraint, and is to do nothing but what 
he sees to be useful. 

Freedom from restraint is, however, to be apparent, not real. 
As in ordinary education the child employs all his faculties in 
duping the master, so in education " according to nature," the 
master is to devote himself to duping the child. " Let him 
always be his own master in appearance, and do you take care 



44 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

to be so in reality. There is no subjection so complete as that 
which preserves the appearance of liberty; it is by this means 
even the will itself is led captive." 

" The most critical interval of human nature is that between 
the hour of our birth and twelve years of age. This is the 
time wherein vice and error take root without our being pos- 
sessed of any instrument to destroy them." 

Throughout this season the governor is to be at work incul- 
cating the art of being ignorant and losing time. " This first 
part of education ought to be purely negative. It consists 
neither in teaching virtue nor truth, but in guarding the heart 
from vice, and the mind from error. If you could do nothing 
and let nothing be done; if you could bring up your pupil 
healthy and robust to the age of twelve years, without his 
being able to distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes 
of his understanding would be open to reason at your first 
lesson ; void both of habit and prejudice, he would have noth- 
ing in him to operate against your endeavors; soon, under your 
instructions, he would become the wisest of men. Thus, by 
setting out with doing nothing, you would produce a prodigy 
of education." 

" Exercise his body, his senses, faculties, powers, but keep 
his mind inactive as long as possible. Distrust all the senti- 
ments he acquires previous to the judgment which should 
enable him to scrutinize them. Prevent or restrain all foreign 
impressions ; and in order to hinder the rise of evil, be not in 
too great a hurry to instill good ; for it is only such when the 
mind is enlightened by reason. Look upon every delay as an 
advantage : it is gaining a great deal to advance without losing 
anything. Let childhood ripen in children. In short, what- 
ever lesson becomes necessary for them, take care not to give 
them to-day, if it may be deferred without danger till to- 
morrow." 

" Do not, then, alarm yourself much about this apparent 
idleness. What would you say of the man who, in order to 
make the most of life, should determine never to go to sleep ? 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF " EMILE'' 45 

You would say, the man is mad; he is not enjoying the time; 
he is depriving himself of it ; to avoid sleep he is hurrying 
toward death. Consider, then, that it is the same here, and that 
childhood is the sleep of reason." 

Such is the groundwork of Rousseau's educational scheme. 
His icieal boy of twelve years old is to be a thoroughly well- 
developed animal, with every bodily sense trained to its high- 
est perfection. " His ideas," says Rousseau, " are confined, but 
clear ; he knows nothing by rote, but a great deal by experi- 
ence. If he reads less well than another child in our books, 
he reads better in the book of nature. His understanding does 
not lie in his tongue, but in his brain; he has less memory 
than judgment ; he can speak only one language, but then he 
understands what he says ; and, although he may not talk of 
things so well as others, he will do them much better. He 
knows nothing at all of custom, fashion, or habit ; what he did 
yesterday has no influence on what he is to do to-day ; he fol- 
lows no formula, is influenced by no authority or example, but 
acts and speaks just as it suits him. Do not, then, expect 
from him set discourses or studied manners, but always the 
faithful expression of his ideas, and the conduct which springs 
naturally from his inclinations." 

This model child looks upon all men as equal, and will ask 
assistance from a king as readily as from a foot-boy. He does 
not understand what a command is, but will readily do any- 
thing for another person, in order to place that person under 
an obligation, and so increase his own rights. He knows, 
also, no distinction between work and play. As a climax 
to this list of wonders, I may add that his imagination has 
remained inactive, and he only sees what is true in reality. 

The reader will probably have concluded by this time, that 
no child can possibly be so educated as to resemble Emile, and, 
perhaps, further, that no wise father would so educate his son, 
if it were possible. A child who does not understand what a 
command is, and who can be induced to do anything for 
another only by the prospect of laying that person under an 



46 JEAN JA GQ UE8 E0U88EA U 

obligation ; who has no habits, and is guided merely by his 
inclinations — such a child as this is, fortunately, nothing but a 
dream of Rousseau's. 

But fantastical as Rousseau often is, the reader of his 
" Emile " is struck again and again, not more by the charm of 
his language than by his insight into child-nature, and the wis- 
dom of his remarks upon it. The " Emile " is a large work, and 
the latter part is interesting rather from a literary and philo- 
sophical jDoint of view, than as it is connected with education. 
I purpose, therefore, confining my attention to the earlier por- 
tion of the book, and giving some of the passages, of which a 
great deal since said and written on education has been a com- 
paratively insipid decoction. 

" All things are good as their Creator made them, but every- 
thing degenerates in the hands of man." These are the first 
words of the " Emile," and the keynote of Rousseau's phi- 
losophy. " We are born weak, we have need of strength ; we 
are born destitute of everything, we have need of assistance ; 
we are born stupid, we have need of understanding. All that 
we are not possessed of at our birth, and which we require 
when grown up, is bestowed on us by education. 

" This education we receive from nature, from men, or from 
things. The internal development of our organs and faculties 
is the education of nature ; the use we are taught to make of 
that development is the education given us by men ; and in 
the acquisitions made by our own experience on the objects 
that surround us, consists our education from things." " Since 
the concurrence of these three kinds of education is necessary 
to their perfection, it is by that one which is entirely indepen- 
dent of us we must regulate the two others." " To live is not 
merely to breathe ; it is to act, it is to make use of our organs, 
our senses, our faculties, and of all those parts of ourselves 
which give us the feeling of our existence. The man who has 
lived most, is not he who has counted the greatest number of 
years, but he who has most thoroughly felt life." 

The aim of education, then, must be complete living. But 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF " EMILE'' 47 

ordinary education (and here for a moment I am expressing 
my own conviction, and not simply reporting Rousseau), in- 
stead of seeking to develop the life of the child, sacrifices child- 
hood to the acquirement of knowledge, or rather the semblance 
of knowledge, which it is thought will prove useful to the 
youth, or the man. Rousseau's great merit lies in his having 
exposed this fundamental error. He says, very truly : 

" People do not understand childhood. With the false notions 
we have of it, the further we go the more we blunder. The 
wisest apply themselves to what it is important to men to know, 
without considering what children are in a condition to learn. 
They are always seeking the man in the child, without reflect- 
ing what he is before he can be a man. This is the study to 
which I have applied myself most ; so that, should my practical 
scheme be found useless and chimerical, my observation will 
always turn to account. I may possibly have taken a very bad 
view of what ought to be done, but I conceive I have taken a 
good one of the subject to be wrought upon. Begin, then, by 
studying your pupils better ; for most assuredly you do not at 
present understand them. So if you read my book with that 
view, I do not think it will be useless to you." 

" Nature requires children to be children before they are 
men. If we will pervert this order, we shall produce forward 
fruits, having neither ripeness nor taste, and sure soon to be- 
come rotten ; we shall have young professors and old children. 
Childhood has its manner. of seeing, perceiving, and thinking, 
peculiar to itself; nothing is more absurd than our being anx- 
ious to substitute our own in its stead." 

" We never know how to put ourselves in the place of chil- 
dren ; we do not enter into their ideas, we lend the,m our own : 
and following always our own train of thought, we fill their 
heads, even while w^e are discussing incontestable truths, with 
extravagance and error." " I wish some judicious hand would 
give us a treatise on the art of studying children ; an art of the 
greatest imjjortance to understand, though fathers and precep- 
tors know not as yet even the elements of it." 



48 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

The governor, then, must be able to sympathize with his 
pupil, and, on this account, Rousseau requires that he should 
be young. " The governor of a child should be young, even as 
young as possible, consistent with his having attained necessary 
discretion and sagacity. I would have him be himself a child, 
that he might become the companion of his pupil, and gain his 
confidence by partaking of his amusements. There are not 
things enough in common between childhood and manhood to 
form a solid attachment at so great a distance. Children some- 
times caress old men, but they never love them." 

The governor's functions are threefold : 1st, that of keeping 
off hurtful influences — no light task in Rousseau's eyes, as he 
regarded almost every influence from the child's fellow-creatures 
as hurtful ; 2d, that of developing the bodily powers, especially 
the senses; 3d, that of communicating the one sciejice for chil- 
dren — moral behavior. In all these, even in the last, he must 
be governor rather than preceptor, for it is less his province to 
instruct than to conduct. He must not lay down precepts, but 
teach his pupil to discover them. "I preach a difficult art," 
says Rousseau, "the art of guiding without precepts, and of 
doing everything by doing nothing." 

The most distinctive characteristic of childhood is vitality. 
" In the heart of the old man the failing energies concentrate 
themselves : in that of the child they overflow and spread out- 
ward ; he is conscious of life enough to animate all that sur- 
rounds him. Whether he makes or mars, it is all one to him ; 
he is satisfied with having changed the state of things, and 
every change is an action." This vitality is to be allowed free 
scope. Swaddling-clothes are to be removed from infants; the 
restraints of school and book-learning, from children. Their 
love of action is to be freely indulged. 

The nearest approach to teaching which Rousseau permitted 
was that which became afterward, in the hands of Pestalozzi, 
the system of object lessons. " As soon as a child begins to dis- 
tinguish objects, a proper choice should be made in those which 
are presented to him." " He must learn to feel heat and cold. 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF " :^MILB'' 49 

the hardness, softness, and weight of bodies ; to judge of their 
magnitude, figure, and otlier sensible qualities, by looking, 
touching, hearing, and particularly by comparing the sight with 
the touch, and judging, by means of the eye, of the sensation 
acquired by the fingers." These exercises should be continued 
through childhood. " A child has neither the strength nor the 
judgment of a man; but he is capable of feeling and hearing as 
well, or at least nearly so. His palate also is as sensible, though 
less delicate : and he distinguishes odors as well, though not with 
the same nicety. Of all our faculties, the senses are perfected 
the first : these, therefore, are the first we should cultivate ; they 
are, nevertheless, the only ones that are usually forgotten, or the 
most neglected." 

" Observe a cat the first time she comes into a room ; she 
looks and smells about; she is not easy a moment; she distrusts 
everything till everything is examined and known. In the same 
manner does a child examine into everything, when he begins 
to walk about, and enters, if I may so say, the apartment of the 
world. All the difference is, that the sight, which is common 
to both the child and the cat, is in the first assisted by the feel- 
ing of the hands, and in the latter by the exquisite scent which 
nature has bestowed on it. It is the right or wrong cultivation 
of this inquisitive disposition that makes children either stupid 
or expert, sprightly or dull, sensible or foolish. Since the 
primary impulses of man urge him to compare his forces with 
those of the objects about him, and to discover the sensible qual- 
ities of such objects as far as they relate to him, his first study is 
a sort of experimental philosophy relative to self-preservation, 
from which it is the custom to divert him by speculative studies 
before he has found his place on this earth. During the time 
that his supple and delicate organs can adjust themselves to the 
bodies on which they should act, while his senses are as yet 
exempt from illusions, this is the time to exercise both the one 
and the other in their proper functions ; this is the time to learn 
the sensuous relations which things have with us. As every- 
thing that enters the human understanding is introduced by 

8. M. — 4 



60 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

the senses, the first reason in man is a sensitive reason; and 
this serves as the basis of his intellectual reason. Our first in- 
structors in philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. Substitut- 
ing books for all this is not teaching us to reason, but teaching 
us to use the "reasoning of others ; it is teaching us to believe a 
great deal, and never to know anything." 

" To exercise any art, we must begin by procuring the neces- 
sary implements ; and to employ those implements to any good 
purpose, they should be made sufficiently solid for their in- 
tended use. To learn to think, therefore, we should exercise our 
limbs, and our organs, which are the instruments of our intel- 
ligence ; and in order to make the best use of those instruments, 
it is necessary that the body furnishing them should be robust 
and hearty. Thus, so far is a sound understanding from being 
independent of the body, that it is owing to a good constitution 
that the operations of the mind are effected with facility and 
certainty." 

" To exercise the senses is not merely to make use of them ; it 
is to learn rightly to judge by them; to learn, if I may so express 
myself, to perceive ; for we know how to touch, to see, to hear, 
only as we have learned. Some exercises are purely natural 
and mechanical, and serve to make the body strong and 
robust, without taking the least hold on the judgment; such are 
those of swimming, running, leaping, whipping a top, throwing 
stones, etc. All these are very well ; but have we only arms 
and legs? Have we not also eyes and ears; and are not these 
organs necessary to the expert use of the former? Exercise, 
therefore, not only the strength, but also all the senses that 
•direct it; make the best possible use of each, and let the impres- 
sions of one confirm those of another. Measure, reckon, weigh, 
compare." According to the present system, " the lessons which 
schoolboys learn of each other in playing about their bounds, 
are a hundred times more useful to them than all those which 
the master teaches in the school." 

He also suggests experiments in the dark, which will both 
train the senses and get over the child's dread of darkness. 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF ''J^MILE" 51 

Emile, living in the country and being much in the open air, 
will acquire a distinct and emphatic way of speaking. He will 
also avoid a fruitful source of bad pronunciation among the 
children of the rich, viz., saying lessons by heart. These lessons 
the children gabble when they are learning them, and afterward, 
in their efforts to remember the words, they drawl, and give all 
kinds of false emphasis. Declamation is to be shunned as act- 
ing. If Emile does not understand anything, he will be too 
wise to pretend to understand it. 

Rousseau seems perhaps inconsistent, in not excluding music 
and drawing from his curriculum of ignorance; but as a 
musician, he naturally relaxed toward the former ; and drawing 
he would have his pupil cultivate, not for the sake of the art 
itself, but only to give him a good eye and supple hand. He 
should, in all cases, draw from the objects themselves, " my inten- 
tion being, not so much that he should know how to imitate 
the objects, as to become fully acquainted with them." 

The instruction given to ordinary .school-boys was, of course, 
an abomination in the eyes of Rousseau. " All the studies 
imposed on these poor unfortunates tend to such objects as are 
entirely foreign to their minds. Judge, then, of the attention 
they are likely to bestow on them." " The pedagogues, w^ho 
make a great j)arade of the instructions they give their scholars, 
are paid to talk in a different strain : one may see plainly, how- 
ever, by their conduct, that they are exactly of my opinion, for, 
after all, what is it they teach them ? Words, still words, and 
nothing but words. Among the various sciences they pretend 
to teach, they take particular care not to fall upon those which 
are really useful ; because there would be the sciences of things, 
and in them they would never succeed ; but they fix on such as 
appear to be understood when their terms are once gotten by 
rote, viz., geography, chronology, heraldry, the languages, etc., 
all studies so foreign to the purposes of man, and particularly to 
those of a child, that it is a wonder if ever he may have occasion 
for them as long as he lives." " In any study whatever, unless 
we possess the ideas of the things represented, the signs repre- 



52 JEAN JAGQU38 ROUSSEAU 

senting them are of no use or consequence. A child is, never- 
theless, always confined to these signs, without our being capable 
of making him comprehend any of the things which they repre- 
sent. What is the world to a child? It is a globe of paste- 
board." 

" As no science consists in the knowledge of words, so there 
is no study proper for children. As they have no certain ideas, 
so they have no real memory ; for I do not call that so which 
is retentive only of mere sensations. What signifies imprint- 
ing on their minds a catalogue of signs which to them represent 
nothing ? Is it to be feared that, in acquiring the knowledge 
of things, they will not acquire also that of signs? Why, then, 
shall we put them to the unnecessary trouble of learning them 
twice? And yet what dangerous prejudices do we not begin 
to instill, by making them take for knowledge words which 
to them are without meaning? 

" In the very first unintelligible sentence with which a child 
sits down satisfied, in the very first thing he takes upon trust, 
or learns from others without being himself convinced of its 
utility, he loses part of his understanding ; and he may figure 
long in the eyes of fools before he will be able to repair so con- 
siderable a loss. No ; if nature has given to the child's brain 
that pliability which renders it fit to receive all impressions, 
it is not with a view that we should imprint thereon the names 
of kings, dates, terms of heraldry, of astronomy, of geography, 
and all those words, meaningless at his age, and useless at any 
age, with which we weary his sad and sterile childhood ; but 
that all the ideas which he can conceive, and which are useful 
to him, all those which relate to his happiness, and will one 
day make his duty plain to him, may trace themselves there in 
characters never to be effaced, and may assist him in conduct- 
ing himself through life in a manner appropriate to his nature 
and his faculties." 

" That kind of memory which is possessed by children, may 
be fully employed without setting them to study books. Every- 
thing they see, or hear, appears striking, and they commit it to 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF " EMILE" 63 

memor3^ A child keeps in his mind a register of the actions 
and conversation of those who are about him ; every scene he is 
engaged in is a book from which he insensibly enriches his 
memory, treasuring up his store till time shall ripen his judg- 
ment and turn it to profit. In the choice of these scenes and 
objects, in the care of presenting those constantly to his view 
which he ought to be familiar with, and in hiding from him 
such as are improper, consists the true art of cultivating this 
primary faculty of a child. By such means, also, it is, that we 
should endeavor to form that magazine of knowledge which 
should serve for his education in youth, and to regulate his 
conduct afterward. This method, it is true, is not productive of 
little prodigies of learning, nor does it tend to the glorification 
of the governess or preceptor ; but it is the way to form robust 
and judicious men, persons sound in body and mind, who, with- 
out being admired while children, know how to make them- 
selves respected when grown up." 

As for reading and writing, if you can induce a desire for 
them the child will be sure to learn them. " I am almost 
certain that Emile will know perfectly well how to read and 
write before he is ten years old, because I give myself very little 
trouble whether he learn it or not before he is fifteen ; but I had 
much rather he should never learn to read at all, than to ac- 
quire that knowledge at the expense of everything that would 
render it useful to him ; and of what service will the power of 
reading be to him when he has renounced its use forever ? " 

The following passage is perhaps familiar to Mr. Lowe : " If, 
proceeding on the plan I have begun to delineate, you follow 
rules directly contrary to those which are generally received ; 
if, instead of transporting your pupil's mind to what is remote, 
if, instead of making his thoughts wander unceasingly in 
other places, in other climates, in other centuries, to the ends 
of the earth, and to the very heavens, you apply yourself to 
keeping him always at home and attentive to that which comes 
in immediate contact with him, you will then find him capable 
of perception, of memory, and even of reason : this is the order 



64 JEAN JA OQ UE8 R0US8EA U 

of nature. In proportion as the sensitive becomes an active 
being, he acquires a discernment proportional to his bodily- 
powers; when he possesses more of the latter, also, than are 
necessary for his preservation, it is with that redundancy, and 
not before, that he displays those speculative faculties which are 
adapted to the employment of such abilities to other purposes. 
Are you desirous, therefore, to cultivate the understanding of 
your pupil? Cultivate those abilities on which it depends. 
Keep him in constant exercise of body ; bring him up robust 
and healthy, in order to make him reasonable and wise;, let 
him work, let him run about, let him make a noise, in a word, 
let him be always active and in motion ; let him be once a man 
in vigor, and he will soon be a man in understanding." 

Let us now examine what j^rovision was made, in Rousseau's 
system, for teaching the one science for children, that of moral 
behavior [des devoirs de lliomme). His notions of this science 
were by no means those to which we are accustomed. As a 
believer in the goodness of human nature, he traced all folly, 
vanity, and vice to ordinary education, and he would therefore 
depart as widely as possible from the usual course. " Examine 
the rules of the common method of education," he writes, " and 
you will find them all wrong, particularly those which relate 
to virtue and manners." 

A simple alteration of method, however, would not suffice. 
Rousseau went further than this. He discarded all received 
notions of goodness, and set up one of his own in their stead. 
" The only lesson of morality proper for children, and the most 
important to persons of all ages, is never to do an injury to 
any one. Even the positive precept of doing good, if not made 
subordinate to this, is dangerous, false, and contradictory. Who 
is there that does not do good ? All the world does good, the 
wicked man as well as others: he makes one person happy at 
the expense of making a hundred miserable; hence arise all 
our calamities. The most sublime virtues are negative ; they 
are also the most difficult to put in practice, because they are 
attended with no ostentation, and are even above the pleasure. 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF •• EMILE'' 55 

SO sweet to the heart of man, of sending awa}'^ others satisfied 
with our benevolence. how much good must that man 
necessarily do his fellow-creatures, if such a man there be, who 
never did any of them harm ! AVhat intrepidity of soul, what 
constancy of mind are necessary here ! It is not, however, by 
reasoning on this maxim, but by endeavoring to put it in prac- 
tice, that all its difficulty is to be discovered." 

"The precept of never doing another harm, implies that of 
having as little to do as possible with human society ; for in the 
social state the good of one man necessarily becomes the evil of 
another. This relation is essential to the thing itself, and can- 
not be changed. We may inquire, on this principle, which 
is best, man in a state of society or in a state of solitude?" 
" A certain noble author has said, none but a wicked man 
might exist alone : for my part, I say, none but a good 
man might exist alone." 

This passage fully explains Rousseau's enthusiasm for Robin- 
son Crusoe, for he must have regarded him as the .best and 
most beneficent of mortals. " Happy are the people amiong 
whom goodness requires no self-denial, and men may be just 
without virtue." And the fortunate solitary had one half of 
goodness ready made for him. " That which renders man 
essentially good is to have few wants, and seldom to compare 
himself with others; that which renders him essentially wicked 
is to have many wants, and to be frequently governed by 
opinion." Rousseau, however, did not vaunt the merits of 
negation with absolute consistency. Elsewhere he says, "He 
who wants nothing will love nothing, and I cannot conceive 
that he who loves nothing can be happy." 

As Rousseau found the root of all evil in the action of man 
upon man, he sought to dissever his child of nature as much as 
possible from his fellow-creatures, and to assimilate him to Rob- 
inson Crusoe. Anything like rule and obedience was abomi- 
nation to Rousseau, and he confounds the wise rule of superior 
intelligence with the tyranny of mere caprice. He writes : " We 
always either do that which is pleasing to the child, or exact of 



56 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

him what pleases ourselves ; either submitting to his humors or 
obliging him to submit to ours. There is no medium ; he must 
either give orders or receive them. Hence the first ideas he 
acquires are those of absolute rule and servitude." The great 
panacea for all evils was, then, " liberty," by which Rousseau 
understood independence. " He only performs the actions of 
his own will, who stands in no need of the assistance of others 
to put his designs in execution ; and hence it follows that the 
greatest of all blessings is not authority, but liberty. A man 
truly free wills only that which he can do, and does only that 
which pleases him. This is my fundamental maxim. It need 
only be applied to childhood, and all the rules of education 
will naturally flow from it." " Whosoever does what he will is 
happy, provided he is capable of doing it himself; this is the 
case with man in a state of nature." 

But a very obvious difficulty suggests itself. A child is 
necessarily the most dependent creature in the world. How, 
then, can he be brought up in what Rousseau calls liberty? 
Rousseau sees this difficulty, and all he can say is, that as real 
liberty is impossible for a child, you must give him sham 
liberty instead. " Let him always be his own master in ap- 
pearance, and do you take care to be so in reality. There is 
no subjection so complete as that which preserves the appear- 
ance of liberty ; it is by this means even the will itself is led 
captive. The poor child, who knows nothing, who is capable 
of nothing, is surely sufficiently at your mercy. Don't you dis- 
pose, with regard to him, of everything about him ? Are not 
you capable of affecting him just as you please ? His employ- 
ment, his sports, his pleasures, his pains, are they not all in 
your power, without his knowing it ? Assuredly, he ought not 
to be compelled to do anything contrary to his inclinations ; 
but then he ought not to be inclined to do anything contrary 
to yours ; he ought not to take a step which you had not fore- 
seen, nor open his lips to speak without your knowing what 
he is about to say. When you have once brought him under 
such regulations, you may indulge him freely in all those cor- 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF '• EMILE'' 67 

poreal exercises which his age requires, without running the 
hazard of bhmting his intellects. You will then see, that in- 
stead of emj)loying all his subtle arts to shake off a burdensome 
and disagreeable tyranny, he will be busied only in making the 
best use of everything about him. It is in this case you will 
have reason to be surjDrised at the subtilty of his invention, 
and the ingenuity with which he makes everything that is in 
his power contribute to his gratification, without being obliged 
to prepossession or opinion. In thus leaving him at liberty to 
follow his own will, you will not augment his caprice. By 
being accustomed only to do that which is proper for his state 
and condition he will soon do nothing but what he ought ; and 
though he should be in continual motion of body, yet, while he 
is employed only in the pursuit of his present and apparent 
interest, you will find his reasoning faculties display themselves 
better, and in a manner more peculiar to himself, than if he 
were engaged in studies of pure speculation." 

After this astonishing passage the reader will probably con- 
sider Rousseau's opinions of moral behavior mere matters of 
curiosity. Yet some of his advice is well worth considering. 

Although children should be made happy, they should by no 
means be shielded from every possible hurt. " The first thing 
we ought to learn, and that which it is of the greatest conse- 
quence for us to know, is to suffer. It seems as if children 
were formed little and feeble to learn this important lesson 
without danger." " Excessive severity, as well as excessive in- 
dulgence, should be equally avoided. If you leave children to 
suffer, you expose their health, endanger their lives, and make 
them actually miserable ; on the other hand, if you are too 
anxious to prevent their being sensible of any kind of pain and 
inconvenience, you only pave their way to feel much greater ; 
you enervate their constitutions, make them tender and effemi- 
nate ; in a word, you remove them out of their situation as 
human beings, into which they must hereafter return in spite 
of all your solicitude." 

His advice on firmness is also good. '' When the child desires 



58 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

what is necessary, you ought to know and immediately comply 
with his request ; but to be induced to do anything by his tears^ is 
to encourage him to cry; it is to teach him to doubt your good- 
will, and to think you are influenced more by importunity than 
benevolence. Beware of this, for if your child once comes to 
imagine you are not of a good disposition, he will soon be of a 
bad one ; if he once thinks .you complain, he will soon grow 
obstinate. You should comply with his request immediately if 
you do not intend to refuse it. 'Mortify him not with frequent 
denials, but never revoke a refusal once made him." Caprice, 
whether of the governor or of the child, is carefully to be 
shunned. 

" There is an innate sense of right and wrong implanted in 
the human heart." In proof of this, he gives an anecdote of an 
infant who almost screamed to death on receiving a blow from 
the nurse. " I am very certain," he says, " had a burning coal 
fallen by accident on the hand of the child, it would have been 
less agitated than by this slight blow, given with a manifest 
intention to hurt it." 

For punishments he gives a hint which has been worked out 
by Mr. H. Spencer. " Oppose to his indiscreet desires only 
physical obstacles, or -the inconveniences naturally arising from 
the actions themselves; these he will remember on a future occa- 
sion." 

Even in the matter of liberty, about which no one disagrees 
more heartily with Rousseau than I do, we may, I think, learn 
a lesson from him. " Emile acts from his own thoughts, and 
not from the dictation of others." " If your head always directs 
your pupil's hands, his own head will become useless to him." 
There is a great truth in this. While differing so far from 
Rousseau, that I should require the most implicit obedience 
from boys, I feel that we must give them a certain amount of 
independent action and freedom from restraint, as a means of 
education. In many of our private schools, a boy is hardly 
called upon to exercise his will all day long. He rises in the 
morning when he must ; at meals, he eats till he is obliged to 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF " EMILE" 69 

stop ; he is taken out for exercise like a horse ; he has all his 
indoor work prescribed for him, both as to time and quantity. 

Thus a boy grows up without having any occasion to think 
or act for himself. He is therefore without self-reliance. So 
much care is taken to prevent his doing wrong, that he gets to 
think only of checks from without. He is therefore incapable 
of self-restraint. Our public schools give more " liberty," and 
turn out better men. 

We will now suppose the child to have reached the age of 
twelve, a proficient in ignorance. His education must at this 
period alter entirely. The age for learning has arrived. " Give 
me a child of twelve years of age, who knows nothing at all, 
and at fifteen I will return him to you as learned as any that 
you may have instructed earlier ; with this difference, that the 
knowledge of yours will be only in his memory, and that of 
mine will be in his judgment." " To what use is it projDer a 
child should put that redundancy of abilities, of which he is at 
present possessed, and which will fail him at another age ? He 
should employ it on those things which may be of utility in 
time to come. He should throw, if I may so express myself, 
the suj^erfluity of his jDresent being into the future. The robust 
child should provide for the subsistence of the feeble man ; not 
in laying up his treasure in coffers whence thieves may steal, 
nor by intrusting it to the hands of others ; but by keeping it 
in his own. To aj^propriate his acquisitions to himself he will 
secure them in the strength and dexterity of his own arms, and 
in the capacity of his own head. This, therefore, is the time 
for employment, for instruction, for study. Observe, also, that 
I have not arbitrarily fixed on this period for that purpose ; 
nature itself plainly points it out to us." 

The education of Emile was to be, to use the language of the 
present day, scientific, not literary. Rousseau professed a hatred 
of books, which he said kept the student so long engaged upon 
the thoughts of other people as to have no time to make a store 
of his own. " The abuse of reading is destructive to knowl- 
edge. Imagining ourselves to know everything we read, we 



60 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

conceive it unnecessary to learn it by other means. Too much 
reading, however, serves only to make us presumptuous block- 
heads. Of all the ages in which literature has flourished, 
reading was never so universal as in the present, nor were men 
in general ever so ignorant." 

Even science was to be studied, not so much with a view to 
knowledge as to intellectual vigor. " You will remember it is 
my constant maxim, not to teach the boy a multiplicity of 
things, but to prevent his acquiring any but clear and precise 
ideas. His knowing nothing does not much concern me, pro- 
vided he does not deceive himself." 

Again he says : " Emile has but little knowledge ; but what 
he has is truly his own ; he knows nothing by halves. Among 
the few things he knows, and knows well, the most important is, 
that there are many things which he is now ignorant of, and 
which he may one day know ; that there are many more which 
some men know and he never will ; and that there is an infinity 
of others which neither he nor anybody else will ever know. He 
possesses a universal capacity, not in point of actual knowledge, 
but in the faculty of acquiring it; an open, intelligent genius, 
adapted to everything, and, as Montaigne says, if not instructed, 
capable of receiving instruction. It is sufficient for me that 
he knows how to discover the utility of his actions, and the 
reason for his opinions. Once again, I say, my object is not 
to furnish his mind with knowledge, but to teach him the 
method of acquiring it when he has occasion for it ; to instruct 
him how to hold it in estimation, and to inspire him, above all, 
with a love for truth. By this method, indeed, we make no 
great advances ; but then we never take a useless step, nor are 
we obliged to turn back again." 

The method of learning, therefore, was to be chosen wuth 
the view of bringing out the pupil's powers ; and the subjects 
of instruction were to be sufficiently varied to give the pupil a 
notion of the connection between various branches of knowl- 
edge, and to ascertain the direction in which his taste and talent 
would lead him. 



QUICK'S ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF " EMILE'' 61 

The first thing to be aimed at is to excite a desire for knowl- 
edge. "Direct the attention of your pupil to the phenomena 
of nature, and you will soon awaken his curiosity ; but to keep 
that curiosity alive, you must be in no haste to satisfy it. Put 
questions to him adapted to his capacity, and leave him to 
resolve them. He is not to know anything because you have 
told it to him, but because he has himself comprehended it ; he 
should not* learn, but discover science. If ever you substitute 
authority in the place of argument, he will reason no longer ; 
he will be ever afterward bandied like a shuttlecock between 
the opinions of others." 

Curiosity, when aroused, should be fostered by suspense, and 
the tutor must, above all things, avoid what Mr. Wilson, of 
Rugby, has lately called "didactic teaching." "I do not at 
all admire explanatory discourses," says Rousseau; "young 
people give little attention to them, and never retain them in 
memory. The things themselves are the best explanations. I 
can never enough repeat it, that we make words of too much 
consequence; with our prating modes of education we make 
nothing but praters." 

The grand thing to be educed was self-teaching. " Obliged to 
learn of himself, the pupil makes use of his own reason, and 
not of that of others; for to give no influence to opinion, no 
weight should be given to authority ; and it is certain that our 
errors arise less from ourselves than from others. From this 
continual exercise of the understanding will result a vigor of 
mind, like that which we give the body by labor and fatigue. 
Another advantage is, that we advance only in proportion to 
our strength. The mind, like the body, carries that only which 
it can carry. But when the understanding appropriates every- 
thing before it commits it to the memory, whatever it afterward 
draws from thence is properly its own ; whereas, in overcharg- 
ing the mind without the knowledge of the understanding, we 
expose ourselves to the inconvenience of never drawing out 
anything which belongs to us." 

Again he writes ; " We acquire, without doubt, notions more 



62 JEAN JACQUES MOUSSE AU 

clear and certain of things we thus learn of ourselves than of 
those we are taught by others. Another advantage also result- 
ing from this method is, that we do not accustom ourselves to a 
servile submission to the authority of others ; but, by exercising 
our reason, grow every day more ingenious in the discovery of 
the relations of things, in connecting our ideas and in the con- ' 
trivance of machines; whereas, by adopting those which are 
put into our hands, our invention grows dull and indifferent, 
as the man who never dresses himself, but is served in every- 
thing by his servants, and drawn about everywhere by his 
horses, loses by degrees the activity and use of his limbs. Boi- 
leau boasted that he had taught Racine to rhyme with difficulty. 
Among the many admirable methods taken to abridge the 
study of the sciences, we are in great want of one to make us 
learn them with effort.''^ 

Following in the steps of Locke, Rousseau required his model 
pupil to learn a trade. But this was not to be acquired as a 
mere amusement. First, Rousseau required it to secure the 
self-dependence of his pupil, and secondly, to improve his head 
as well as his hands. " If, instead of keeping a boy poring over 
books, I emjDloy him in a workshop, his hands will be busied 
to the improvement of his understanding; he will become a 
philosopher, while he thinks himself only an artisan." 

I hope the quotations I have now given will suffice to con- 
vey to the reader some of Rousseau's main ideas on the subject 
of education. The " Emile " was once a poj)ular book in this 
country. In David Williams's lectures (dated 1789) we read, 
" Rousseau is in full possession of public attention. ... To 
be heard on the subject of education it is expedient to direct our 
observations to his works." But now the case is different. In 
the words of Mr. Herman Merivale, " Rousseau was dethroned 
with the fall of his extravagant child, the Republic." Perhaps 
we have been less influenced by both father and child than 
any nation of Europe ; and if so, we owe this to our horror of 
extravagance. The English intellect is eminently decorous, and 
Rousseau's disregard for " appearances," or rather his evident 



qUIGE'8 ADAPTATION AND SUMMARY OF '• EMILE" 63 

purpose of making an impression by defying '* appearances " 
and saying just the opposite of what is expected, simply dis- 
tresses it. Hence, the " Emile " has long ceased to be read in 
this country, and the only English translation I have met with 
was published in the last century, and has not been reprinted. 
So Rousseau now works upon us only through his disciples, 
especially Pestalozzi ; but the reader will see from the passages 
I have selected that we have often listened to Rousseau un- 
awares. 

The truths of the " Emile " will survive the fantastic forms 
which are there forced upon them. Of these truths, one of the 
most important, to my mind, is the distinction drawn between 
childhood and youth. I do not, of course, insist with Rousseau 
that a child should be taught nothing till the day on which he 
is twelve years old, and then that instruction should begin all 
at onca There is . no hard and fast line that can be drawn 
between the tw'o stages of development ; the change from one to 
the other is gradual and, in point of time, differs greatly with 
the individual. But, as I have elsewhere said, I believe the dif- 
ference between the child and the youth to be greater than the 
difference betw^een the youth and the man ; and I believe, 
further, that this is far too much overlooked in our ordinary 
education. Rousseau, by drawing attention to the sleep of rea- 
son and to the activity and vigor of the senses in childhood, 
became one of the most important educational reformers, and 
a benefactor of mankind. 



WILLIAM SHENSTONE 

1714-1763 

William Shenstone was born at the Leasowes, in Shropshire, Eng- 
land, in 1714. His school-clays wei'e passed in his native village, amid 
scenes which he has described in poems of much grace and beauty. 
For ten years he studied at Pembroke College, Oxford. Here, from 
time to time, he published small books of lyrics, which wei'e well re- 
ceived. In 1745 he took up his permanent residence on his ancestral 
estate of the Leasowes, which he embellished with every adjunct of 
beauty and taste. Dr. Samuel Johnson, referring to the return of 
Shenstone to the Leasowes, says: "Now was excited his delight in 
real pleasures, and his ambition of rural elegance. He began from 
this time to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his 
vpalks, and to wind his waters ; which he did with such judgment and 
such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and the 
admiration of the skillful, a place to be visited by travelers and copied 
by designers." Unfortunately, Shenstone did not calculate the cost of 
the work he had undertaken until he found himself hopelessly in- 
volved in debt. The estate was saci-ificed to pay for its adornment, 
and the last days of the poet were clouded with care and sorrow, which 
doubtless hastened his end. He died in 1763. 

Characterization 

The inimitable "Schoolmistress" of Shenstone is one of the felici- 
ties of genius ; but the purpose of this poem has been entirely miscon- 
ceived. Johnson, acknowledging this charming effusion to be " the 
most pleasing of Shenstone's productions," observes, "I know not 
what claim it has to stand among the moral Avorks." The truth is, that 
it was intended for quite a different purpose by the author, and Dods- 
ley, the editor of his works, must have strangely blundered in desig- 
nating it " a moral poem." It may be classed with a species of poetry 
till recently rare in our language, and Avhichwe sometimes find among 
the Italians in their rhne piacevoli, or poesie burlesche, which does 
not always consist of low humor in a facetious style, with jingling 
rhymes, to which form we attach our idea of a burlesque poem. There 
64 



TEE SCHOOLMISTRESS 65 

is a refined species of ludicrous poetry which is comic yet tender, lusory 
yet elegant, and with such a blending- of the serious and the face- 
tious that the result of such a poem may often, among its other pleas- 
ures, produce a sort of ambiguity ; so that we do not always know 
whetlier the writer is laughing at his subject, or whether he is to be 
laughed at. The admirable Whistlecraf t ' met this fate. "The 
Schoolmistress " of Shenstone has been admired for its exquisitely 
ludicrous turn. This discovery I owe to the good foi"tune of possessing 
the original edition of "The Schoolmistress," which the author printed 
under his own directions, and to his own fancy. To this piece of 
ludicrous poetry, as he calls it, "lest it should be mistaken," he added 
a ludicrous index, "partly to show fools that I am in jest." But "the 
fool, " his subsequent editor, who, I regret to say, was Robert Dodsley, 
thought proper to suppress this amusing "Ludicrous Index," and the 
consequence is, as the poet foresaw, that his aim has been mistaken. 

Isaac D'Israeli. 

But with all the beauties of the Leasowes in our minds, it may still 
be regretted that, instead of devoting his whole soul to clumping 
beeches and projecting mottoes for summer-houses, he had not gone 
more into living nature for subjects, and described her interesting 
realities with the same fond and natural touches which give so much 
delightfulness to his portrait of " The Schoolmistress." 

Thomas Campbell, 

The Schoolmistress^ 



Ah me ! full sorely is my heart forlorn, 
To think how modest worth neglected lies ; 
While partial fame doth with her blasts adorn 
Such deeds alone as pride and pomp disguise ; 

1 "Whistlecraft," the nom de plume of J. Hookbam Frere (1769-1846), an 
English diplomatist and poet, author of exquisite humorous compositions, comic 
and serious by turns. 

"^ The schoolmistress portrayed is Dame Sarah Lloyd, the " school-dame " of 
the poet in his early years. Shenstone designed to have for an illustration of 
the poem a comic portrait of this since-famous personage. 

The veritable sehoolhouse of Dame Sarah, with its thatched roof, formed the 
frontispiece of the original edition of the poem. The "birch tree " in front was 
gilded by the rays of the setting sun. Shenstone was disgusted with the picture 
and with his artist, and declared the 'setting sun" to be " a falling monster." 

S. M. — 5 



66 WILLIAM- 8EEN8T0NE 

Deeds of ill sort, and mischievous emprize: 
Lend me thy clarion, goddess ! let me try 
To sound the praise of merit, ere it dies ; 
Such as I oft have chanced to espy, 
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity. 

II. 

In every village mark'd with little spire, 
Embower'd in trees and hardly known to fame, 
There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire, 
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name ; 
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame ; 
They grieven sore, in piteous durance pent. 
Awed b}^ the j)ow'r of this relentless dame ; 
And oft-times, on vagaries idly bent. 
For unkempt hair, or task unconn'd, are sorely shent 

III. 

And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree. 
Which learning near her little dome did stow; 
Whilom a twig of small regard to see, 
Tho' now so wide its waving branches flow; 
And work the simple vassals mickle woe : 
For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew 
But their limbs shudder'd, and their pulse beat low; 
And as they look'd they found their horror grew, 
And shaped it into rods, and tingled at the view. 



Near to this dome is found a patch so green, 
On which the tribe their gambols do display ; 
And at the door impris'ning board is seen. 
Lest weakly wights of smaller size should stray ; 
Eager, perdie, to bask in sunny day ! 



TEE SCHOOLMISTRESS 67 

The noises intermix'd, which thence resound, 
Do learning's little tenement betray ; 
Where sits the dame, disguised in look profound, 
And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around. 

VI. 

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow, 
Emblem right meet of decency does yield : 
Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trow. 
As is the harebell that adorns the field : 
And in her hand, for scepter, she does wield 
Tway birchen spraj^s ; with anxious fear entwined 
With dark distrust, and sad repentance fill'd ; 
And steadfast hate, and sharp affliction join'd, 
And fury uncontroU'd, and chastisement unkind. 



VIII. 

A russet stole was o'er her shoulders thrown ; 
A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air ; 
'Twas simple russet, but it was her own ; 
'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair, 
'Twas her own labor did the fleece prepare : 
And, sooth to say, her pupils, ranged around, 
Through pious awe, did term it j)assing rare ; 
For they in gajDing wonderment abound, 
And think, no doubt, she been the greatest wight on ground. 

IX. 

Albeit ne flattery did corrupt her truth, 

Ne pompous title did debauch her ear ; 

Goody, good-woman, gossip, n'aunt, forsooth, 

Or dame, the sole additions she did hear ; 

Yet these she challenged, these she held right dear, 



68 WILLIAM 8HEN8T0NE 

Ne would esteem him act as mought behove, 
Who should not honor'd eld with these revere : 
For never title yet so mean could prove, 
But there was eke a inind which did that title love. 



One ancient hen she took delight to feed, 
The plodding pattern of the busy dame : 
"Which, ever and anon, impell'd by need, 
Into her school, begirt with chickens, came ; 
Such favor did her j^ast deportment claim ; 
And, if neglect had lavish 'd on the ground 
Fragment of bread, she would collect the same ; 
For well she knew, and quaintly could expound, 
What sin it were to waste the smallest crumb she found* 



XI. 

Herbs, too, she knew, and well of each could speak 
That in her garden sipp'd the silv'ry dew ; 
Where no vain flow'r disclosed a gaudy streak ; 
But herbs for use, and physic, not a few, 
Of grey renown, within those borders grew. 
The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme. 
Fresh balm, and marygold of cheerful hue ; 
The lowly gill that never dares to climb ; 
And more I fain would sing, disdaining here to rhyme. 



XII. 

Yet euphrasy, may not be left unsung. 

That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around ; 

And pungent radish biting infant's tongue ; 

And plantain ribb'd, that heals the reaper's wound; 

And marj'ram sweet, in shepherd's posy found ; 



THE SGE00LMI8TRES8 69 

And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom 
Shall be, ere-while, in arid bundles bound, 
To lurk amidst the labors of her loom, 
And crown her kerchiefs clean with mickle rare perfume. 

XIII. 

And here trim rosemarine, that whilom crown'd 
The daintiest garden of the proudest peer ; 
Ere, driven from its envied site, it found 
A sacred shelter for its branches here ; 
Where edged with gold its giitt'ring skirts appear. 
wassel days ! customs meet and well ! 
Ere this was banish'd from his lofty sphere, 
Simplicity then sought this humble cell. 
Nor ever would she more with thane and lordling dwell. 



XVI, 

In elbow-chair, like that of Scottish stem 
By the sharp tooth of cank'ring eld defaced, 
In which, when he receives his diadem. 
Our sov'reign prince and liefest liege is placed, 
The matron sate ; and some with rank she graced 
(The source of children's and of courtier's pride). 
Redress'd affronts, for vile affronts there pass'd ; 
And warn'd them not the fretful to deride. 
But love each other dear, whatever them betide. 

* XVII. 

Right well she knew each temper to descry ; 
To thwart the proud, and the submiss to raise ; 
Some with vile copper-prize exalt on high, 
And some entice with pittance small of praise ; 
And other some with baleful sprig she 'frays. 



70 WILLIAM SHENSTONE 

Ev'n absent, she the reins of power doth hold, 
While with quaint arts the giddy crowd she sways, 
Forewarn'd, if little bird their pranks beholdj 
'Twill whisper in her- ear, and all the scene unfold. 

XVIII. 

Lo now with state she utters the command ! 
Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks rej^air ; 
Their books of stature small they take in hand, 
Which with pellucid horn secured are, 
To save from fingers wet the letters fair. 
The work so gay, that on their back is seen, 
St. George's high achievements does declare ; 
On which thilk^ wight that has y-gazing been 
Kens the forth-coming rod, unpleasing sight, I ween I 



XX. 

ruthful scene ! when, from a nook obscure, 
His little sister doth his peril see. 
All playful as she sate she grows demure ; 
She finds full soon her wonted spirits flee ; 
She meditates a pray'r to set him free. 
Nor gentle pardon could this dame deny 
(If gentle pardon could with dames agree) 
To her sad grief that swells in either eye. 
And wrings her so that all for pity she could die. 

XXI. 

No longer can she now her shrieks command ; 

And hardly she forbears thro' awful fear 

To rushen forth, and, with presumptuous hand, 

To stay hard justice in its mid career. 

On thee she calls, on thee, her parent dear 

^that, or such 



THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 71 

(Ah ! too remote to ward the shameful blow). 
She sees no kind domestic visage near, 
And soon a flood of tears begins to flow, 
And gives a loose at last to unavailing woe. 

XXII. 

But ah, what pen his piteous plight may trace ? 
Or what device his loud laments explain 
The form uncouth of his disguised face ? 
The pallid hue that dyes his looks amain ? 
The plenteous shower that does his cheek distain ? 
When he, in abject wise, implores the dame, 
Ne hopeth aught of sweet reprieve to gain ; 
Or when from high she levels well her aim. 
And through the thatch his cries each falling stroke proclaim. 

XXIII. 

The other tribe, aghast, with sore dismay 
Attend, and con their tasks with mickle care ; 
By turns astonied, ev'ry twig survey. 
And from their fellow's hateful wounds beware; 
Knowing, I wist, how each the same may share ; 
Till fear has taught them a performance meet. 
And to the well-known chest the dame repair ; 
Whence oft '^dth sugar'd cates she doth 'em greet, 
And ginger-bread y-rare ; now certes doubly sweet ! 



XXVI. 

Behind some door, in melancholy thought, 
Mindless of food, he, dreary caitiff ! pines ; 
Ne for his fellow's joyaunce careth aught, 
But to the wind all merriment resigns ; 
And deems it shame if he to peace inclines ; 



* 72 WILLIAM SHENSTONE 

And many a sullen look askance is sent, 
Which for his dame's annoyance he designs ; 
And still the more to pleasure him she's bent, 
The more doth he, perverse, her 'havior past resent. 

XXVII. 

Ah me ! how much I fear lest pride it be ! 
But if that pride it be which thus inspires, 
Beware, ye dames, with nice discernment see, 
Ye quench not too the sparks of nobler fires : 
Ah ! better far than all the muses' lyres. 
All coward arts, is valor's gen'rous heat ; 
The firm fixt breast which fit and right requires, 
Like Vernon's patriot soul ; more justly great 
Than craft that pimps for ill, or flow'ry false deceit. 

XXVIII. 

Yet, nursed with skill, what dazzling fruits appear 1 
Ev'n now sagacious foresight points to show 
A little bench of heedless bishops here, ' 
And there a chancellor in embryo. 
Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so. 
As Milton, Shakespeare, names that ne'er shall die ! 
Tho' now he crawl along the ground so low, 
Nor weeting how the muse should soar on high, 
Wisheth, poor starv'ling elf! his paper kite may fly. 



* Of these lines, which contain so pleasing a picture of ' ' genius in its in; ancy, " 
Isaac D'Israeli says : "I cannot but think that the far-famed stanza in ' Gray's 
Elegy,' where he discovers men of genius in peasants, as Shenstone has in 
children, was suggested by this original conception. 

" ' Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest, 
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood,' 

is, to me, a congenial thought, with an echoed turn of expression from the lines 
of ' The Schoolmistress.' " 



THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 73 

XXX. 

But now Dan Phoebus gains tl>e middle sky, 
And Liberty unbars her prison-door ; 
And like a rushing torrent out they fly, 
And now the grassy cirque han cover'd o'er 
With boist'rous revel-rout and wild uproar ; 
A thousand ways in M'^anton rings they run ; 
Heav'n shield their short-lived pastimes, I implore'. 
For well may freedom, erst so dearly won, 
Appear to British elf more gladsome than the sun. 



THOMAS FULLER 

1608-1661 

Thomas Fuller, a distinguished clergyman and a voluminous 
writer, was born in 1608, at Aldwiukle, in Northamptonshire, Eng-' 
land — which was, later, the birthplace of Dry den. Fuller was pre- 
cocious in youth, and entered Queen's College, Cambridge, at the age 
of twelve years. He was a chaplain in the royal army and, after 
the Restoration, was appointed chaplain extraordinary to the king. 
Among his most valuable works are church histories and biographical 
sketches. 

Characterization 

There was in Thomas Fuller a combination of those qualities which 
minister to our entertainment, such as few have ever possessed in an 
equal degree. He was, first of all, a man of multifarious reading, of 
great and digested knowledge, which an extraordinary retentiveness 
of memory preserved ever ready for use, and considerable accuracy of 
judgment enabled him successfully to apply. So well does he vary 
his treasures of memory and observation, so judiciously does he inter- 
weave his anecdotes, quotations, and remarks, that it is impossible to 
conceive a more delightful checker- work of acute thought and apposite 
illustration of original and extracted sentiment than is presented in 
his works. 

"Retrospective Review." 



Selections 

1. The Good Schoolmaster 

There is scarce any profession in the commonwealth more 
necessary, which is so shglitly performed. The reasons whereof 
. I conceive to be tliese : First, young scholars make this calling 
their refuge ; yea, perchance, before they have taken any degree 
in the university, commence schoolmasters in the country, as if 
nothing else were required to set up this profession but only a 
U 



SELECTIONS 76 

rod and a ferula. Secondly, others who are a,ble use it only as 
a passage to better preferment, to patch the rents in their pres- 
ent fortune, till they can provide a new one, and betake them- 
selves to some more gainful calling. Thirdly, they are disheart- 
ened from doing their best with the miserable reward which in 
some places they receive, being masters to their children and 
slaves to their parents. Fourthl}^, being grown rich they grow 
negligent, and scorn to touch the school but by the proxy of the 
usher. But see how well our schoolmaster behaves himself. 

His genius inclines him with delight to his profession. God 
of his goodness hath fitted several men for several callings, that 
the necessity of church and state, in all conditions, may be pro- 
vided for. And thus God mouldeth some for a schoolmaster's 
life, undertaking it with desire and delight, and discharging it 
with dexterity and happy success. 

He studieth his scholars' natures as carefully as they their 
books; and ranks their dispositions into several forms. And 
though it may seem difficult for him in a great school to 
descend to all particulars, yet experienced schoolmasters may 
quickly make a grammar of boys' natures. 

He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teaching ; not lead- 
ing them rather in a circle than forwards. He minces his pre- 
cepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness 
of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him. 

He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction. Many a 
schoolmaster better answereth the name paidotribes ' than paida- 
gogosj' rather tearing his scholars' flesh with whipping than 
giving them good education. No wonder if his scholars hate 
the muses, being presented unto them in the shapes of fiends 
and furies. 

Such an Orbilius ^ mars more scholars than he makes. Their 

1 boy-beater 

^ He means " boy- teach er ; " hutthe]ia,ida,gogos{7tai8aya)yoi), "pedagogue," 
of the Greeks, was the servant who conducted the children from their homes to 
the schools, and not the instructor. 

' a reference to the teacher of the Latin poet Horace, satirized by the latter 
as " Orbilius plagosus " — " Orbilius of the birch." 



76 THOMAS FULLER 

tyranny hath caused many tongues to stammer which spake 
plain by nature, and whose stuttering at first was nothing else 
but fears quavering on their speech at their master's presence ; 
and whose mauling them about their heads hath dulled those 
who in quickness exceeded their master. 

To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make school- 
masters careful in their place — that the eminences of their 
scholars have commended the memories of their schoolmasters 
to j)osterity. 

2. Of Memory 

It is the treasure-house of the mind, wherein the monuments 
thereof are kept and preserved. Plato makes it the mother of 
the muses. Aristotle sets it in one degree further, making expe- 
rience the mother of arts, memory the parent of experience. 
Philosophers place it in the rear of the head ; and it seems the 
mine of memor}^ lies there, because there men naturally dig for 
it, scratching it when they are at a loss. This again is two-fold : 
one, the simple retention of things ; the other, a regaining them 
when forgotten. 

Artificial memory is rather a trick than an art, and more for 
the gain of the teacher than profit of the learners. Like the 
tossing of a pike, which is no part of the postures and motions 
thereof, and is rather for ostentation than use, to show the 
strength and nimbleness of the arm, and is often used by 
wandering soldiers, as an introduction to beg. Understand it 
of the artificial rules which at this day are delivered by memory 
mountebanks ; for sure an art thereof may be made (wherein 
as yet the world is defective), and that no more destructive to 
natural memory than spectacles are to eyes, which girls in Hol- 
land wear from twelve years of age. But till this be found out, 
let us observe these plain rules. 

First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remem- 
ber. What wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of 
thy head which was there rather tacked than fastened ? It is 
best knocking in the nail over night, and clinching it the next 
morning. 



SELECTIONS FROM FULLER 77 

Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a 
slave. Remember, Atlas was wearj^ Have as much reason as 
a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a 
purse, if it be over full that it cannot shut, all will drop out of 
it ; take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, 
lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the 
digestion thereof. 

Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will 
carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than 
when it lies untoward, flapping and hanging about his shoul- 
ders. Things orderly fardled up under heads are most j)ortable. 

Adventure not all thy learning in one bottom, but divide it 
betwixt thy memory and thy note-books. He that with Bias 
carries all his learning about him in his head, will utterly be 
beggared and bankrupt, if a violent disease, a merciless thief, 
should rob and strip him. I know some have a commonplace * 
against commonplace books,^ and yet perchance will privately 
make use of what they publicly declaim against. A common- 
place book contains many notions in garrison, whence the 
owner may draw out an army into the field on competent 
warning. 

' a trite or customary remark. 

^ It is an excellent plan for every teacher to keep a commonplace book of con- 
siderable size, different portions of it being set apart for the different subjects 
upon which he is to give instruction. On the first twenty pages " Geography " 
may be the head; the nest twenty pages maybe set apart for "History;" 
twentymore maybe assigned to "Reading," and a like numberto " Arithmetic," 
"Grammar," "Spelling," "Writing," etc., reserving quite a space for "Mis- 
cellaneous Matter." This would make a large book ; but when it is remembered 
that it is to be used for several years, it is well to have it large enough to con- 
tain a large amount of matter. Now, whenever a teacher hears a lecture on a 
peculiar method of teaching either of these branches, let him note the prominent 
parts of it under the proper head, and especially the illustrations. When he 
reads or hears an anecdote illustrating geography, history, or grammar, let it be 
copied under the proper head. If it illustrates geography, let the name of the 
place stand at its head. When he visits a school, and listens to a new explana- 
tion or a new process, let him note it under its head. In this way he may col- 
lect a thousand valuable things to be used with judgment in his school. — Page's 
" 'Theory and Practice of Teaching." 



JOHANN HEINRICH PESTALOZZI 

174.6-1 82 7 

JoHANN Heinrich Pestalozzi, the greatest of modern educational 
reformers, was born at Zurich, in German Switzerland, in 1746. His 
family was of Italian oi-igin and of Protestant faith. He established 
at his beautiful villa of Neu Hof, in the canton Aargau, an industrial 
school for the poor — probably the first of its kind. It was a failure. 
Following the military events in the canton Unterwalden, he main- 
tained in an old convent at Stanz a school for the starving and home- 
less victims of war. For a time he conducted a school at Burgdorf, 
and afterward he established a famous institute of leai'ning in the old 
castle of Yverdon, in the canton Vaud. Besides contributing fre- 
quently to the periodical literature of his time, Pestalozzi wrote, at 
intervals, a number of books, the chief of which were " Figures to 
my Spelling Book" (a collection of fables), " Leonard and Gertrude," 
"Christopher and Eliza," "How Gertrude Educated her Children," 
and "Hours of a Hermit." He died in 1827. The following estimate 
of the life of this wonderful man is from the pen of Professor Joseph 
Payne, of the College of Preceptors in London : 

"At fifty-two years of age, we find Pestalozzi utterly unacquainted 
with the science and the art of education, and very scantily furnished 
even with elementary knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton 
Unterwalden, the charge of eighty children, whom the events of war 
have rendei'ed homeless and destitute. Here he was at last in the 
position which, during years of sorrow and disappointment, he had 
eagerly desired to fill. He was now brought into immediate contact 
with ignorance, vice, and brutality, and had the opportunity for 
testing the power of his long-cherished theories. The man whose 
absorbing idea had been that the ennobling of the people, even of the 
lowest class, through education, was no mere dream, was now, in 
the midst of extraordinary difficulties, to struggle with the solution of 
the problem. And surely if any man, consciously possessing strength 
to fight, and only desiring to be brought face to face with his adver- 
sary, ever had his utmost wishes granted, it was Pestalozzi at Stanz. 
Let us try for a moment to realize the circumstances — the forces of the 
78 



JOHANN EEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZI 79 

enemy on the one side, the single arm on the other, and the field of 
the combat. The house in which the eighty children were assembled, 
to be boarded, lodged, and taught, was an old tumble-down Ursuline 
convent, scarcely habitable, and destitute of all the conveniences of 
life. The only apartment suitable for a schoolroom was about twenty- 
four feet square, furnished with a few desks and forms ; ^ and into 
this were crowded the wretched children, noisy, dirty, diseased, and 
ignorant, and with the manners and habits of barbarians. Pestalozzi's 
only helper in the management of the institution was an old woman, 
who cooked the food and swept the rooms ; so that he was, as he tells 
us himself, not only the teacher, but the paymaster, the man-servant, 
and almost the housemaid of the children. 

" 'I was obliged,' he says, 'unceasingly to be everything to my 
children. I was alone with them from morning till night. It was 
from my hand that they received whatever could be of service both to 
their bodies and minds. All succor, all consolation, all instruction came 
to them immediately from myself. Their hands were in my hands ; 
my eyes were fixed on theirs, my tears mingled with theirs, my smiles 
encountered theirs, my soup was their soup, my drink was their drink. 
I had around me neither family, friends, nor servants ; I had only them. 
I was with them when they were in health, by their side when they 
were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the last to go to bed, the first 
to rise in the morning. When we were in bed, I used to pray with 
them and talk to them until they went to sleejj. They wished me to 
do so.' 

'' This active, i^ractical, self-saci'ificing love, beaming on the frozen 
hearts of the children, by degrees melted and animated them. But it 
was only by degrees. Pestalozzi was at first disappointed. He had 
expected too much, and had formed no plan of action. He even 
prided himself upon his want of plan. 'I knew,' he says, 'no sys- 
tem, no method, no ai^t but that which rested on the simple conse- 
quences of the firm belief of the children in my love toward tbem. I 
wished to know no other.' Before long, however, he began to see 
that the response which the movement of his heart toward theirs called 
forth was rather a response of his personal efforts, than one dictated 
by their own will and conscience. It excited action, but not sponta- 
neous, independent action. This did not satisfy him. He wished to 
make them act from strictly moral motives. 

"But he conceived— and .justly — that their intellectual training was 
to be looked on as part of their moral training. Whatever increases 
our knowledge of things as they are, leads to the appreciation of the 

1 benches 



80 JOHANN EEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZI 

truth; for truth, in the widest sense of the term, is this knowledge. 
But the acquisition of knowledge, as requiring- mental effort, and there- 
fore exercising the active powers, necessarily increases the capacity to 
form judgments on moral questions; so that, in proportion as you 
cultivate the intellect, you must train the moral powers which are to 
carry its decisions into effect. Moral and intellectual education must 
consequently, in the formation of the human being, proceed together, 
the one stimulating and maintaining the action of the other. Pesta- 
lozzi, therefore, instructed as well as educated, and indeed educated by 
means of instruction. In carrying out this object, he proceeded from 
the near, the practical, the actual, to the remote, the abstract, and 
the ideal." 

' ' One of the aspects in Avhich he has been brought before us — and it 
deserves every consideration — is that of an earnest, self-sacrificing, 
enthusiastic philanthropist, endowed with what Richter calls 'an 
almighty love,' of which the first and last thought was, how he 
might liaise the debased and suffering among his countrymen to a 
higher level of happiness and knowledge, by bestowing upon them the 
blessings of education. It is right that he should be thus exhibited to 
the world; for never did any man better deserve to be enrolled in the 
noble army of martyrs who have died that others might live, than 
Pestalozzi. To call him the Howard of educational philanthropists, is 
only doing scant justice to his devoted character, and underestimates 
rather than overestimates the man. 

"Another aspect in which Pestalozzi is sometimes presented to us 
is that of an unhandy, unpractical, dreamy theorist; whose views 
were ever extending beyond the compass of his control ; who, like the 
djinn of the Eastern story, called into being forces which mastered 
instead of obeying him; whose 'unrivaled incapacity for governing' 
(this is his ow^n confession) made him the victim of circumstances; 
who was'utterly wanting in worldly wisdom ; who, knowing man, did 
not know men; and who, therefoi^e, is to be set down as one who 
promised much more than he performed. It is impossible to deny that 
there is substantial truth in such a representation ; but this only in- 
creases the wonder that, in spite of his disqualifications, he accom- 
plished so much. It is still true that his awakening voice, calling for 
reform in education, was responded to by hundreds of earnest intelli- 
gent men, who ijlaced themselves under liis banner, and were proud to 
follow whither the Luther of educational reform wished to lead them. 
A third view of Pestalozzi presents him to us as merely interested about 
elementary education — and this appears to many who are engaged in 
teaching what are called higher subjects a matter in which they have 



CEABAGTERIZATION 81 

little orno concern. Those, however, who thus look down on Pesta- 
lozzi's work, only show, by their indifference, a profound want both 
of self-knowledge and of a knowledge of his principles and his pur- 
pose. Elementary education, in. the sense in which Pestalozzi under- 
stands it, is, or ought to be, the concern of every teacher, whatever 
his especial subject, and whatever the age of his pupils; and when he 
sees that elementary education is only another expression for the form- 
ing of the character and mind of the child, he must acknowledge that 
this object comes properly within the sphere of his labors, and deserves, 
on every ground, his thoughtful attention. 

"In spite, then, of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifications in many 
respects for the task he undertook ; in spite of his ignorance of even 
common subjects (for he spoke, read, wrote, and ciphered badly, and 
knew next to nothing of classics or science) ; in spite of his want of 
worldly wisdom, of any comprehensive and exact knowledge of men 
and of things ; in spite of his being merely an elementary teacher, 
■ — through the force of his all-conquering love, the nobility of his 
heart, the resistless energy of his enthusiasm, his firm grasp of a few 
first principles, his eloquent exposition of them in words, his resolute 
manifestation of them in deeds, he stands forth among educational 
reformers as the man whose influence on education is wider, deeper, 
more penetrating, than that of all the rest — the prophet and the sover- 
eign of the domain in which he lived and labored." 

Characterization 

The materials for "Leonard and Gertrude" were gathered during 
long years of suffering and disappointment ; and the work itself was 
the result of an intense love, which made the cause of the poor and 
friendless its own. He had already failed in a practical attempt to 
relieve the unfortunate, but he had obtained a deeper insight into the 
causes which perpetuated the evils of society. With a bleeding heart, 
he had seen that poverty, unless counterbalanced by a healthy culture 
of the mind and soul, was generally accompanied by moral and phys- 
ical wretchedness ; by intemperance, ignorance, and superstition. He 
was also able to trace part of the sufferings of the poor to the selfish- 
ness and hardness of the rich, many of whom derived a shameful 
profit from the improvidence of their unfortunate brethren. He had 
also, occasionally, seen in the cottages of the poor cheerfulness, 
peace, and comfort ; and this spirit he had, with great certainty, always 
traced to the influence of a sound home education, conducted by an 
intelligent mother. 

The characters of this tale, far from engaging in brilliant or dazzling 
s.M. — 6. 



82 JOEANN HEINRIOH PE8TAL0ZZI 

actions, are great in their very simplicity and truth to nature. The 
principal ones are : Gertrude, a pattern of a good and intelligent wife 
and mother — an educator who tries to fulfill the duties of her office to 
their fullest extent, without troubling her head with plans of emanci- 
pation ; Leonard, her husband, who, however, plays only a secondary 
part; Arner, the lord of the manor, who tries to effect a thorough 
reform in the administration of the parish intrusted to his care ; Ernst, 
a worthy clergyman, who assists Arner, and works on the hearts and 
convictions, and not on the fears and prejudices, of his parishioners; 
Gliilphy, the schoolmaster, in whose teaching and discipline Pestalozzi 
embodies some of the favorite ideas of education which he afterward 
matured ; Hummel, the bailiff, chief magistrate and judge of the vil- 
lage — the personification of wickedness, avarice and pride — a man with 
a heart hardened through many years of mismanagement and crime; 
and Rudi, one of the victims of the bailiff, whose story forms some of 
the most affecting chapters of the book. 

Domestic education and social reform were considered so important 
by Pestalozzi, that, after completing "Leonard and Gertrude," he 
wrote another treatise upon these subjects, entitled " Christopher and 
Eliza," which was published in 1782. In the preface to the first edition 
of this book, Pestalozzi remarks that it was written principally to 
supply a commentary to "Leonard and Gertrude," the moral lessons 
of which he wished to impress upon the convictions of the people. He 
concludes by saying: " I know it will appear tedious to mere novel 
readers, but I desire that it should be read in humble cottages, many 
of the inmates of which will find in it sentiments corresponding to 
their own experiences. " 

The personages who, during thirty evenings, are supposed to read 
and discuss as many chapters of "Leonard and Gertrude," are: Chris- 
topher, a wealthy and intelligent farmer; Eliza, his wife; Josiah, 
their servant ; and Fritz, their son. 

By a strange anomaly, which is in strong contrast with the usual 
order of things, Josiah is the principal speaker, and the one who deals 
most in abstruse reflections. Christopher is next in importance ; 
while Eliza only occasionally makes shrewd and sensible remarks, 
mostly upon moral and educational questions. Fritz ir a silent list- 
ener, but, at the end of each conversation, is requested to sum up all 
the maxims which he has gathered from the story of the discussion. 
The little prodigy does this with such an amount of wisdom, original- 
ity, and wit, and in such flowing language, that one is astonished at 
the precocity of even an imaginary child. 

Hermann Krusi. 



GERTRUDE AT HOME 83 

Gertrude at Home 

(Prom ' ' Leonard and Gertrude ") 

There lived in Bonnal a mason. He was called Leonard, and 
his wife, Gertrude. He had seven children, and some property ; 
but he had this fault — that he often let himself be tempted to 
the tavern. When he was once seated there he behaved like a 
madman, and was often led from drinking to gaming, and thus 
deprived of the produce of his labor. Whenever this had hap- 
pened at night Leonard repented in the morning; for, when 
he saw his wife and children wanting bread, it went so to his 
heart that he trembled and cast down his eyes to conceal his 
tears. 

Gertrude was the best wife in the village ; but she and her 
blooming children were in danger of being robbed of their 
father and driven from their home, and of sinking into the 
greatest misery, because Leonard would not let wine alone. 

Gertrude saw the approaching danger, and felt it most keenly. 
When she fetched grass from the meadow, when she took hay 
from the loft, when she set away the milk in her clean pans, 
whatever she was doing, she was tormented by the thought 
that her meadow, her haystack, and her little hut, might soon 
be taken away from her. When her children were standing 
around her, or sitting in her lap, her anguish was still greater, 
and the tears streamed down her cheeks. 

Hitherto, however, she had been able to conceal this silent 
weeping from her children ; but, on Wednesday before Easter, 
when she had waited long, and her husband did not come 
home, her grief overcame her, and the children saw her tears. 
" mother ! " exclaimed they, " you are weeping," and they 
pressed closer to her. Sorrow and anxiety were on every 
countenance. With deep sobs, heavy downcast looks, and silent 
tears the children surrounded the mother, and even the baby in 
her arms betrayed a feeling of pain hitherto unknown. All this 
quite broke her heart. Her anguish burst out in a loud cry, 



84 JOEANN HEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

and ali the children wept with her, and there was a sound of 
lamentation as Leonard opened the door. 

Gertrude, who lay with her face on the bed, heard not the 
opening of the door nor the entrance of the father ; neither did 
the children perceive him, for they saw only their weeping 
mother. Thus did Leonard find them. 

God in heaven sees the tears of the wretched, and puts a 
limit to their grief. The mercy of God brought Leonard to wit- 
ness this scene, which pierced his soul. The paleness of death 
was on his countenance, and he could scarcely articulate, " Lord 
Jesus, what is this ! " Then the mother saw him for the first 
time, the children looked up, and their loud expressions of grief 
were hushed. 

" Tell me, Gertrude," said he, " what is this dreadful trouble 
in which I find thee ? " 

" Oh, my dear," answered she, " heavy cares i^ress upon my 
heart, and when thou art away, sorrow preys more keenly 
upon me." 

" Gertrude," said Leonard, " I know why thou weepest, wretch 
that I am ! " 

Then Gertrude sent away the children, collected all her 
strength, and took courage to urge him not to bring any further 
trouble and misery upon his children. She was pious, and 
trusted in God ; and before she spoke, she prayed silently for 
her husband and children ; her heart was comforted, and she 
said : " Leonard, trust in the mercy of God, and take courage to 
do nothing but what is right." 

" Gertrude, Gertrude ! " exclaimed Leonard, and his tears 
fell in torrents. 

" Oh, take courage, and trust in thy Father in heaven, and 
all will be better with thee. It goes to my heart to make thee 
weep. I would gladly keep every trouble from thee. Thou 
knowest that, by thy side, I could be content with bread and 
water, and the still midnight is often to me an hour of cheerful 
labor for thee and the children. But, if I concealed from thee 
my anxiety lest I be separated from thee and these little ones, I 



QEBTEUDE AT HOME 85 

should be no mother to them, nor true to thee. Our children 
are yet full of gratitude and love toward us ; but if we do not 
continue to act as parents, their love and tenderness must needs 
decrease ; and only think what thou wouldst feel if Nicolas had 
no longer a home, and must go out to service ; if he and all 
these dear children should become poor through our fault — 
should cease to thank us, and begin to weep for us, their parents. 
Leonard, couldst thou bear to .see thy children driven out of 
doors to seek their bread at another's table ? Oh ! it would 
kill me." So spoke Gertrude, and the tears fell down her 
cheeks. 

Leonard, not less affected, cried : " What shall I do, miserable 
creature that I am ? What can I do ? I am more wretched 
than thou knowest. Gertrude, Gertrude ! " He was again 
silent, and wrung his hands. 

" my dear husband, do not distrust God's mercy ! What- 
ever it be, speak, that we may consult together and comfort 
each other." 

Gertrude was alone with her children. The events of the 
week and thoughts of the approaching festival filled her heart. 
In thoughtful silence she prepared the supper, took from the 
closet the Sunday clothes for the family, and laid them out 
ready for the morrow. When she had completed her work she 
assembled her children around the table to pray with them. It 
was her custom on Saturdays, at the hour of evening prayer, to 
remind them of their faults and of such occurrences as were 
peculiarly calculated to interest and please them. This day she 
remembered, especially, the loving kindness of God toward her 
during the past week ; and she wished, as far as possible, to 
impress deeply on the minds of the children the tokens which 
they had received of the goodness and mercy of God. 

The children sat round her in silence, with their little hands 
folded for prayer, and the mother began thus : 

" Children, I have good news to tell jt'ou. Your dear father 
has had very excellent work given to him this week, by which 



86 JOEANN IIEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

he will earn much more than he could before ; and we may 
hope, my children, to eat our bread with less care and sorrow 
in future. Give thanks, therefore, unto God, our loving Father 
in heaven, for his goodness toward us. Remember often the 
old times when I was obliged, with care and anxiety, to portion 
out to you every mouthful of bread. Oh, it grieved my heart 
that many a time I could not give you enough. But our heav- 
enly Father knew that it would be better for you, my dears, to 
be accustomed to poverty and patience, and learn to conquer 
your own desires, than to live in plenty. Oh, my children, 
remember, as long as you live, our days of poverty and the 
distress and sorrow we have endured, and if our condition is 
improved, henceforth be mindful of those who suffer even as 
you have. Will you do so ? " 

" Oh, yes, dear mother, we will," replied the children. 

" Well, then, Nicolas, whom dost thou know that is suffering 
most from hunger ? " 

" It is little Rudi," said Nicolas. " He is almost starving. 
He eats grass from the ground." 

" Wouldst thou like to give him thy supper now and then ? " 

" Oh, yes, mother. May I to-morrow ? " 

" Certainly, thou mayest," said the mother. Then turning to 
Betti, she asked : " And thou — to whom wouldst thou give thy 
supper ? " 

Betti named some poor child, and so did the other children as 
each was asked in turn, all being delighted in anticipation of 
the pleasure they would bestow. After some moments the 
mother remarked : " That is enough, my children. Now see 
what beautiful presents his lordship Arner has made you." 

" Oh ! the bright pennies ! Will you show them to us ? " cried 
the children. 

" Yes, after prayers," said Gertrude ; and the children shouted 
with joy. 

" You are noisy, my children," chided the mother. " If some- 
thing good comes to you, always think of God, the giver. I 
rejoice with you ; but, when people are loud and violent in their 



9EBTRUDE AT HOME 87 

joy or sorrow, peace and evenness of temper are lost. You see, 
children, when you thank your father for something, you do 
not make much noise; you fall upon his neck silently, and 
when you really feel it in your hearts, the tears come to your 
eyes. So it should be toward God. If you feel very much joy 
on account of the good he does you, and at the same time it 
touches your heart, I am sure you will not say many words or 
make much noise, but the tears will come to your eyes in think- 
ing how good your heavenly Father is." 

Gertrude, after giving more advice to her children, changed 
the subject of conversation by asking : " But, my dears, how has 
your conduct been this week ? " The children looked at each 
other, but said nothing. 

" Anne, hast thou been a good girl this week ? " asked Ger- 
trude. 

" No, mother ; thou knowest what I did with my little 
brother," replied Anne. 

" Oh, yes, Anne. The poor child might have been very much 
injured. Babes left in that way have sometimes died. Besides, 
only think, if thou wast shut up by thyself in a room, and left 
to cry and to suffer thirst and hunger. Really, Anne, I should 
not be able to leave this house for a moment if I were not so 
sure that thou wouldst take care of the baby." 

" Trust me, dear mother ; I will not leave him again for a 
single moment," pleaded Anne. 

" Well, I hope thou wilt not give me another such fright. 
Nicolas, how has it been with thee this week ? " 

" I know of nothing wrong," he quickly answered. 

" Hast thou forgotten that thou didst throw down Kate last 
Monday ? " said the mother. 

" I did not do it on purpose, mother." 

" To be sure thou didst not. To do such a thing on purpose 
would be wicked, indeed. Art thou not ashamed to make such 
an excuse ? " 

" I am sorry for it. I will be more careful," said Nicolas. 

" Be sure not to forget it, my dear. Belieye me, thy careless- 



88 JOHANN HEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZI 

ness will certainly make thee unhappy. Well, Betti, how hast 
thou behaved this week ? " 

"I am sure I cannot think of anything wrong, mother," 
replied she. 

"Art thou quite sure, Betti?" 

" I am, indeed, mother, as nearly as I can recollect. I should 
not mind telling it if I knew." 

" It is very odd that even when thou hast nothing to tell, thou 
answerest with as many words as another who has a great deal 
to say." 

" Well, what have I said then ? " asked Betti. 

" Thou hast said nothing, I know, but thou hast given a long 
answer. We have told thee a thousand times that thou art too 
forward. Thou never thinkest what thou shouldst say, and yet 
thou art always talking." Gertrude here brought to Betti 's 
recollection a piece of forwardness — giving an envious neighbor 
some information which brought her father into trouble. 

" I am very sorry for it," replied Betti ; " but neither thou 
nor father had said a word about not wishing me to tell 
of it." 

" Then it will be necessary that to whatever we say in this 
room we must always add : Now, this is a thing which Betti 
may gossip about at the neighbors' door, and at the fountain ; 
but not this, and this," replied Gertrude. 

" I do beg thy pardon, mother ; I did not mean it so." 

" Thou hast been told once for all, that thou art not to talk of 
anything which is no business of thine ; but it is all in vain. 
There is no getting thee out of that habit, except by severe 
means ; and the very first time I overtake thee in idle gossip, I 
shall make use of the rod." 

The tears burst from poor Betti's eyes when her mother men- 
tioned the rod. Gertrude saw it and said : " The greatest 
mischief, Betti, often arises out of idle gossip, and thou must be 
cured of that fault." 

Thus the mother discoursed with them all. Afterward, 
Nicolas repeated the Saturday evening prayer which Gertrude 



GERTRUDE AT HOME 89 

had taught him: "Dear Father in heaven, thou art always 
kind to men on earth. From thee all things come that our 
dear father and mother give us. . . . Dear Father, we that 
are sitting here and praying together, are brothers and sisters ; 
therefore, we will be kind to each other, and do to each other no 
harm, but all the good we can. We elder ones will take care of 
the younger ones with all faithfulness and diligence, that our 
dear father and mother may go comfortably about their work 
for our bread. Alas ! this is all we can do for them, for all the 
trouble and expense they have for our sakes. Reward them, 
Father in heaven, for all they do for us, and make us obedient 
unto their commands, that we may remain dear unto them to 
the end of their lives." 

Here Nicolas was to stop, and they prayed according to what 
had happened through the week, as follows : " We thank thee, 
heavenly Father, that thou hast lightened the heavy burden 
of our parents, and the care for the bread for themselves and 
their children, and hast blessed our dear father with good and 
profitable employment. We thank thee that our lord Arner 
with paternal affection protects, comforts, and assists us in all 
our misery and distress. We thank thee for all the blessings 
which thou hast bestowed on us through him." 

Then the mother taught Betti to pray in this manner : " For- 
give me, my God, my besetting sin, and teach me to bridle 
my tongue ; to be silent when I ought not to speak, and to 
answer considerately and directly when I am asked." 

And Nicolas thus : " Preserve me, Father, from all hasti- 
ness, and teach me to be on my guard, and to see what I do, and 
who is about me." 

And Anfte: "I am sorry, good God, for leaving my dear 
little brother so thoughtlessly, and so frightening my dear, good 
mother. I will not do it again in all my life. Forgive me, I 
pray thee, God." 

The mother then said : " The Lord be with you ; the Lord 
bless you ; the Lord let the light of his countenance shine upon 
you and be merciful unto you." 



90 JOHANN HEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

After this, mother and children sat yet a little while in that 
solemn silence which a true prayer always imposes. 

Betti interrupted this silence : " Wilt thou show us the new 
pennies ? " said she to her mother. 

" I will," replied the mother ; " but thou art always the first to 
speak, Betti." 

Nicolas now jumped from his seat, and pushed forward that 
he might be nearer the candle and see the new pennies better, 
and in doing so hurt the baby, so that he began to cry. 
: Then said the mother : " Nicolas, this is very bad. Thou 
didst promise, not more than a quarter of an hour ago, that 
thou wouldst be more careful, and now see what thou hast 
done." 

" mother," said Nicolas, " I am very sorry for it. It shall 
not happen any more." 

" That is what thou didst just now promise to God Almighty 
and yet thou hast been careless again," said the mother. " Thou 
shalt go to bed without thy supper." 

Thus saying, she led him away into the chamber. His 
brothers and sisters all stood about grieved, for they were sorry 
that poor Nicolas should go to bed without his supper. " What 
a pity it is that you will not be governed by kindness," said the 
mother, when she came back. 

" Let him come out again for once," begged the children. 

" No, my dears ; he must be cured of his thoughtless habits," 
was the mother's reply. 

" Well, then, we will not see the pennies till to-morrow, that 
he may see them with us," said Anne. 

"' Well spoken, Anne," answered the mother ; " he shall see 
them with you." 

After this she gave the children their supper, and then led 
them to the chamber where Nicolas was still crying. 

" Be very careful another time, my dear Nicolas," said the 
mother to him. 

Nicolas answered : " Pray forgive, dear, dear mother ! do for- 
give and kiss me ! " 



GERTRUDE AT HOME 91 

Gertrude kissed him, and a burning tear flowed down her 
cheek, when she said to him : " Nicolas, try to become more 
careful." 

Nicolas threw both his arms round her neck, and said : " O 
mother, forgive me." 

Gertrude once more blessed her children, and then returned 
to her room, which was lighted by a small lamp. 

She was now quite alone, and her heart was still in silent 
prayer, which inexpressibly moved her soul. The feeling of 
God's goodness, the hope of life everlasting, the sense of that 
internal joy and peace which dwells in those who trust in their 
Heavenly Father, all stirred her soul, and she fell on her 
knees, and a flood of tears flowed over her cheeks. 

[The moral to be drawn from this lesson is contained in the 
following directions to parents in regard to their children : 

First. — Observe the nature and propensities of your children, 
in order to be able to educate them according to their indi- 
vidual wants and talents. 

Second. — Speak to them in a simple, intelligent manner, that 
your words and sentiments may be fully understood. A prayer 
from the heart, applied to circumstances, is better than a formal 
one mechanically repeated. 

Tliird. — Do not content yourselves with preaching of love and 
charity ; but try to make the children loving and charitable. 
Lead them to experience the pleasure of self-sacrifice, that they 
may better understand this crowning excellence of the human 
character. 

Fourth. — Act as the mediator between your children and God ; 
for they cannot appreciate his goodness and greatness. In 
order to be able to do this, become yourselves examples of love, 
truthfulness, and justice. 

Fifth. — Be firm, and, at the same time, kind. Real love never 
overlooks faults: it corrects them. The ultimate gratitude of 
children is of more value than their temporary gratification.] 



92 JOHANN HEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZ1 

The School in Bonnal 

(From " Leonard and Gertrude") 
1. A Good School is Founded 

Since the squire had returned from Cotton Meyer's, he had 
spent every moment he could spare from the heutenant in con- 
sultation with him on the organization of a new school. They 
both came to the conclusion that a child is always well edu- 
cated when he has learned to practice skillfully, orderly, and 
to the benefit of him and his, what is to be his future occupa- 
tion. 

This principal object of all education seemed to them at 
once the first requisite of a reasonable school for human beings. 
And they perceived that the lieutenant, and any person pro- 
posing to establish a good school for farmers' and factory 
children, must either himself know and understand what such 
children need to know and do in order to become capable 
farmers and factory workers ; or, if he himself does not under- 
stand it, that he must inquire and learn about it, and have 
those at hand who do know and can show him. 

They naturally thought first of Cotton Meyer himself, and 
immediately after this conversation and their meal they went to 
him. 

" This is the man of whom I have said so much to you," said 
the squire to the lieutenant ; and then, to Meyer, " and this 
isthe gentleman who, I hope, will encourage you about your 
school." 

Meyer did not understand ; but the squire explained to him, 
saying that this was to be the schoolmaster of the village. 

Meyer could not sufficiently wonder at this, and after a time 
he said, " If the gentleman is willing to take so much pains, we 
cannot thank him enough ; but it will require time to become 
well acquainted with our condition and ways in the village." 



TEE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 93 

Lieut. "I presume so; but one must begin some time or 
other ; and I shall not regret any pains I take to examine, as 
thoroughly as possible, what is needed and what your children 
can properly learn, in order to be well fitted for their farming 
and manufacturing." 

Meyer. " That will be an excellent beginning." 

Lieut. "I do not know how else I ought to begin; and I 
shall take every opportunity of becoming acquainted with all 
manner of house and field labor, so as to learn correctly what 
training and what example your children need, in order to the 
right education for their vocation and circumstances." 

Meyer's Mareieli was quite at home with the lieutenant. She 
showed him all about the house, and in the stables, what the 
children must do to learn to do in good order whatever was 
necessary for themselves and their parents ; made them dig in 
the garden and throw earth hither and thither, to even the 
ground and improve its appearance, and adjust the edges ; and 
to scatter fodder correctly. The more he saw, the more ques- 
tions he asked; inquired how they measured hay, reckoned 
tithes, and kept account of the cotton manufacture; what was 
the difference in wages in the different kinds of cotton, and a 
hundred other things. These they explained to him as far as 
they could. Then the}^ proposed to teach the children how to 
spin. But Mareieli said, " We take in some hundred zentners of 
yarn in a year, and I have never yet brought them to spin 
right well. And I cannot complain about it, either, for they 
have to do a good deal in the fields and about the cattle. But 
if you desire to see a good arrangement for the matter of spin- 
ning, you must go to see the mason's wife. With her there is 
something to be seen on that point ; but not with us." 

Lieut. " Is not the mason's wife, of whom you speak, named 
Gertrude ? " 

Mareieli. " It seems that you know her already ? " 

Lieut. " No ; but the squire has proposed to go directly from 
you to her." 

Mar. " Well ; then you will see that I told you correctly." 



94 JOEANN EEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 



2. A Good School is the Foundation of all Good Fortune 

Gertrude's room was so full, when they entered, that they 
could scarcely pass between the wheels. Gertrude, who had 
not expected to see any strangers, told the children as the door 
opened to get up and make room. But the squire would not 
let one of them move, but gave his hand first to the pastor and 
then to the lieutenant, to lead them behind the children, next 
to the wall, to Gertrude's table. 

You could not believe how much the scene delighted these 
gentlemen. What they had seen with Cotton Meyer seemed 
nothing, in comparison. 

And very naturally. Order and comfort about a rich man 
do not surprise. We think hundreds of others do not do so 
well because they have not money. But the happiness and 
comfort in a poor hut, showing so unanswerably that every- 
body in the world could be comfortable if they could maintain 
good order, and were well brought up — this astonishes a well- 
disposed mind almost beyond power of expression. 

But the gentlemen had a whole room full of such children, 
in the full enjoyment of such blessings, before their eyes. The 
squire seemed for a time to be seeing the picture of the first- 
born of his future better-taught people, as if in a dream ; and 
the falcon eyes of the lieutenant glanced hither and thither 
like lightning, from child to child, from hand to hand, from 
work to work, from eye to eye. The more he saw, the fuller 
did his heart grow with the thought, "She has done, and com- 
pletely, what we seek ; the school which we look for is in her 
room." 

The room was for a time as still as death. The gentlenien 
could do nothing but gaze and gaze, and be silent. But Ger- 
trude's heart beat at the stillness and at the marks of respect 
which the lieutenant showed to her during it, and which bor- 
dered on reverence. The children, however, spun away briskly, 
and laughed out of their eyes to each other ; for they perceived 



THE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 95 

that the gentlemen were there on their account, and to see their 
work. 

The lieutenant's first words to Gertrude were, " Do these 
children all belong to you, mistress ?- " 

" No," said Gertrude, " they are not all mine ; " and she then 
pointed out, one after another, which were hers and which were 
Rudi's. 

" Think of it, lieutenant," said the pastor ; " these children 
who belong to Rudi could not spin one thread four weeks 
ago." 

The lieutenant looked at the pastor and at Gertrude and 
answered, " Is it possible ! " 

Gertkude. " That is not remarkable. A child will learn to 
spin right well in a couple of weeks. I have known children to 
learn in two days." 

Squire. " It is not that which I am wondering at in this 
room, but quite another thing. These children of other people, 
since the three or four weeks ago when Gertrude received them, 
have come to look so differently, that in truth I scarcely knew 
one of them. Living death and the extremest misery spoke 
from their faces; and these are so gone that no trace of them 
is left." 

The lieutenant replied in French, " But what does she do to 
the children, then ? " 

Squire. " God knows ! " 

Pastor. " If you stay here all day, you hear no tone, nor see 
any shadow of anything particular. It seems always, and in 
everything she does, as if any other woman could do it ; and 
certainly the commonest wife would never imagine that Ger- 
trude was doing, or could do, anything she herself could not." 

Lieut. " You could not say m.ore to raise her in my estima- 
tion. That is the culmination of art, where men think there 
is none at all. The loftiest is so simple that children and boys 
think they could do much more than that." 

As the gentlemen conversed in French, the children began 
to look at each other and laugh. Heireli and the child who 



9b JOHANN HEINBIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

sat opposite to her made mouths to each other, as if to say, 
" Parlen, parlen, parlen." 

Gertrude only nodded, and all was still in a moment. And 
then the lieutenant, seeing a book lying on every wheel, asked 
Gertrude what they were doing with them. 

Gee. " Oh, they learn out of them." 

Lieut. " But not while they are spinning ? " 

Ger. "Certainly." 

Lieut. " I want to see that." 

Squire. " Yes ; you must show us that, Gertrude." 

Ger. " Children, take up your books and learn." 

Children. " Loud, as we did before ? " 

Ger. " Yes, loud, as you did before ; but right." 

Then the children oj)ened their books, and each laid the 
appointed page before him, and studied the lesson which had 
been set. But the wheels turned as before, although the chil- 
dren kept their eyes wholly on the books. 

The lieutenant could not be satisfied with seeing, and desired 
her to show him everything relating to her management of the 
children, and what she taught them. 

She would have excused herself, and said that it was nothing 
at all but what the gentlemen knew, and a thousand times bet- 
ter than she. 

But the squire intimated to her to proceed. Then she told 
the children to close their books, and she taught them, by rote, 
a stanza from the song : 

"How beautiful the sunbeams' play, 
And how their soft and brilliant ray- 
Delights and quickens all mankind — 
The eye, the brain, and all the mind ! " 

The third stanza, which they were then learning, reads thus : 

"The sun is set. And thus goes down, 
Before the Lord of heaven's frown, "" 
The loftiness and pride of men, 
And all is dusk and night again." 



TEE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 97 

She repeated one line at a time, distinctly and slowly, and 
the children said it after her, just as slowly, and very distinctly, 
and did so over and over, until one said, " I know it now." 
Then she let that one repeat the stanza alone; and when he 
knew every syllable, she permitted him to repeat it to the 
others, and them to repeat after him, until they knew it. 
Then she began with them all three of the stanzas, of which 
they had already learned the first two. And then she showed 
the gentlemen how she taught them arithmetic, and her mode 
was the simplest and most practical that can be imagined. 

But of that I shall speak again in another place. 

3. Eecruiting Officer's Doings 

The lieutenant was every moment more convinced that this 
was the right instruction for his school ; but he was also con- 
vinced that he needed a woman like this, if the giving it was to 
be not merely possible, but actual. 

A Prussian recruiting officer does not contrive so many 
means of getting into the service a fellow who comes up to the 
standard as the lieutenant contrived to decoy into his trap this 
woman, who came up to his standard in school teaching. 

" But, mistress," he began, " could not the arrangements in 
your room here be introduced into a school ? " 

She thought a moment, and replied, " I don't know. But it 
seems as if what is possible with ten children is possible with 
forty. But it would require much ; and I do not believe that 
it would be easy to find a schoolmaster who would permit 
such an arrangement in his school." 

Lieut. " But if you knew of one who desired to introduce it, 
would you help him ? " 

Ger. {Laughing) " Yes, indeed ; as much as I could." 

Lieut. "And if I am he? " 

Ger. '' Are what ? " 

Lieut. "The schoolmaster, who would be glad to organize 
such a school as you have in your room." 

s. M.— 7 



98 JOHANN HEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

Ger. " You are no schoolmaster." 

Lieut. " Yes, I am. Asls: the gentlemen." 

Ger. " Yes, perhaps, in a city, and in something of which we 
know neither gigs nor ga.gs." 

Lieut. " No ; but, honestly, in a village." 

Ger. {Pointing to the wheels) " Of such children ? " 

Lieut. " Yes, of such children." 

Ger. " It is a long way from me to the place where school- 
masters for such children look like you." 

Lieut. " Not so far." 

Ger. " I think it is." 

Lieut. " But you will help me, if I undertake to organize my 
school in that way ? " 

Ger. " If it is far away, I will not go with you." 

Lieut. " I shall remain here." 

Ger. " And keep school ? " 

Lieut. "Yes." 

Ger. " Here in the room ? " 

Lieut. " No ; in the schoolroom." 

Ger. " You would be sorry if you should be taken at your 
word." 

Lieut. " But you still more if you should have to help me." 

Ger. " I will help you — and I say so three times, if you are 
our schoolmaster." 

Here he and the other gentlemen began to laugh ; and the 
squire said, " Yes, Gertrude; he is certainly your schoolmaster." 

This perplexed her. She blushed and did not know what to 
say. 

Lieut. " What makes you so silent ? " 

Ger. " I think it would have been well if I had been silent 
for a quarter of an hour back." 

Lieut. ''Why?" 

Ger. " How can I help you, if you are a schoolmaster ? " 

Lieut. " You are looking for excuses ; but I shall not let you 

go." 

Ger. " I beg of you." 



THE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 99 

Lieut. " It will be of no use ; if you had promised to marry 
me, you must abide by the promise." 

Ger. " No, indeed ! " 

Lieut. " Yes, indeed ! " 

Ger. " It is out of the question." 

Squire. ''If there is anything which you know, Gertrude, 
do it as well as you can ; he will not ask anything more ; but, 
whatever you do to help him, you will do to help me." 

Ger. " I will, very willingly ; but you see my room full of 
children, and how I am tied down. But with regard to advice 
and help in matters relating to work which a gentleman natu- 
rally cannot understand, I know a woman who understands 
them much better than I ; and she can do whatever I cannot." 

Squire. " Arrange it as you can ; but give him your hand 
on the bargain." 

4. A Proud Schoolmaster 

The new condition of affairs raised the courage of the pastor, 
who had been almost in the state of a slave under the old squire, 
and his acquaintance with the son contributed much toward 
accomplishing his ancient plans. On the next Sunday he ex- 
plained to the people some chapters of the Bible, and, at the 
end of the service, called for whatever else was to be done. 
Then the squire took the lieutenant by the hand, and told him 
to say himself to the congregation what he desired to do for 
their children. 

The lieutenant arose, bowed to the squire, the pastor, and the 
congregation, took off his hat, leaned on his stick, and said : " I 
have been brought up with a nobleman, and am myself a noble- 
man ; but I am not for that reason ashamed to serve God and 
my fellow-men in the situation to which Providence calls me ; 
and I thank my dear parents, now under the ground, for the 
good education they gave me, and which enables me now to 
put your school on such a footing that, if God will, your chil- 
dren shall all their lives be respected for having attended it. 
But it is not my business to make long speeches and sernions; 



100 JOHANN HEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZI 

but if it please God, I will begin my school instruction to-mor- 
row, and then everything will be made plain. Only, I should 
say that each child should bring his work, whether sewing 
or spinning cotton, or whatever it be, and the instruments for 
the same, until the squire shall purchase such for the school." 

" And what will he do with spinning-wheels in the school ? " 
said men and women to each other in all their seats, and one, 
behind him, so loud that he heard it. 

The lieutenant turned around, and said aloud, "Nothing, 
except to make the children learn from one another how to 
read and cipher." 

This the farmers could not get into their heads, how the 
scholars could learn from one another how to read and cipher ; 
and many of them said, at the church door, " It will be with him 
as it was with the madder 23lants, and the beautiful sheep that 
the old squire had brought from two hundred leagues away, and 
then let them die miserably at their fodder." But some older 
and experienced men said, "He does not look at all like the 
madder plants ; and has not the appearance of a man that talks 
carelessly." 

That evening the schoolmaster went into the schoolroom and 
nailed up, immediately opj)Osite where he was going to sit, a 
beautiful engraving. This represented an old man, with a long 
white beard, who, with wrinkled brow and eyes wide open, lifted 
up his finger. 

The squire and the pastor said, " What is that for ? " 

Lieut. " He is to say to me, ' Gliilphi, swear not, while you 
sit there before me.' " 

They replied, " Then we will not pull him down ; he fills too 
important a place." 

Lieut. " I have been considering about it." 

5. School Organization 

Next morning the lieutenant began with his school. But I 
should not readily recommend any other schoolmaster to do 
what he did, and, after such a Sunday's proclamation, which 



THE SCHOOL IN BONNAL lOl 

was considered proud by everybody, to cause his school to 
be put in order by a farmer's wife. Still, if he be a Gliilphi, 
he may do it, and it will not injure him ; but I mean a real 
Gliilphi, not a pretended one. 

He let Gertrude put the children in order, just as if she had 
them at home. 

She divided them according to age and the work they had, 
as they could best be put together, and placed her own and 
Rudi's children, who were already accustomed to her manage- 
ment, between others. In front, next to the table, she put those 
who did not know their A, B, C; next behind them, those 
who were to spell, then those who could read a little, and 
last those who could read fluently. Then, she put only three 
letters on the blackboard, and taught them to the first row. 
Whoever kjiew them best was to name them aloud, and the 
others were to repeat them after him. Then she changed the 
order of the letters, wrote them larger and smaller, and so left 
them before their eyes, all the morning. In like manner she 
wrote several letters for the scholars who were learning to 
spell, and those who could read a little had to spell with these 
letters. But these, as well as those who could read fluently, 
were to have their books always open by their spinning-wheels, 
and to repeat in a low tone of voice after one who read aloud. 
And every moment they were saying to that one, '' Go on." 

For the work, Gertrude had brought a woman with her 
named Margaret, who was to come to the school every day, as 
Gertrude had no time for that purpose. 

This Margaret understood her business so well, that it would 
not be easy to find another like her. As soon as any child's 
hand or wheel was still she stepped up to him, and did not 
leave him until all was going on in good order again. 

Most of the children carried home that evening so much work 
that their mothers did not believe they had done it alone. But 
many of the children answered, " Yes ; it makes a difference 
whether Margaret shows us or you." And in like manner they 
praised the lieutenant, their schoolmaster. 



102 JOHANN EEINBICH PESTALOZZI 

In the afternoon he conducted the school, and Gertrude 
watched him, as he had her in the morning ; and things went 
on so well that she said to him, " If I had known that I could 
finish all my work in helping you organize a school in a couple 
of hours, I should not have been so troubled on Thursday." 

And he was himself pleased that things went so well. 

That evening he gave to each of the children over seven 
years of age two pieces of paper, stitched together, and a couple 
of pens; and each child found his name written on the paper 
as beautifully as print. They could not look at it enough ; 
and one after another asked him how it was to be used. He 
showed them, and wrote for them, for a quarter of an hour, 
such great letters that they looked as if they were printed. 
They would have watched him until morning, it seemed so 
beautiful to them, and they kept asking him if tbey were to 
learn to do the same. 

He answered, " The better you learn to write the better I shall 
be pleased." 

At dismissal he told them to take care of their paper, and to 
stick the points of their pens into rotten apples, for that was 
the very best way to keep them. 

To this many of the children answered, " Yes, that would be 
nice, if we had any rotten apples ; but it is winter now." 

At this he laughed, and said, " If you have none, perhaps I 
can get them for you. The pastor's wife has certainly more 
than she wants." 

But other children said, " No, no ; we will get some, we have 
some yet." 

6. School Organization — {Continued) 

The children all ran home, in order quickly to show their 
beautiful writing to their parents ; and they praised the school- 
master and Margaret as much as they could. But many an- 
swered, " Yes, yes ; new brooms sweep clean ; " or some such 
singular expression, so that the children did not understand 
what they meant. This troubled the children, but still they 



THE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 103 

did not cease to be pleased ; and if their parents took no pleas- 
ure in their beautiful writing, they showed it to whomever they 
could, to their little brothers in the cradle and to the cat on 
the table, and took such care of it as they never in their lives 
had taken of anything before. And if the little brother reached 
out his hand, or the cat its paw, after it, they quickly drew 
it back, and said, "You must only look at it with your 
eyes; not touch it." Some of them put theirs away in the 
Bible. Others said they could not open such a big book, and 
put it in a chest among the most precious things they had. 
Their joy at going to school again was so great that the next 
morning many of them got up almost before day, and called 
their mothers to get them something to eat, so that they might 
get to school in good season. 

On Friday, when the new writing-benches, which the squire 
had had made, were ready, their pleasure was very great. 
During the first lesson they would all sit together; but the 
lieutenant divided them into four classes, in order that there 
should not be too many of them, and that none should escape 
him, and none could make a single mark that he did not 

see. 

In this study, also, most of the children did very well. Some 
learned so easily that it seemed to come to them by itself ; and 
others, again, did well, because they had been more in the habit 
of doing things that required attention. Some, however, who 
had never had very much in their hands except the spoon with 
which they ate, found great difficulties. Some learned arith- 
metic very easily, who found writing very hard, and who held 
the pen as if their hands had been crippled. And there were 
some young loafers among them, who had all their lives 
scarcely done anything except run around the streets and 
fields, and who, nevertheless, learned everything far quicker 
than the rest. 

So it is in the world. The most worthless fellows have the 
best natural endowments, and usually exceed in intelligence 
and capacity those who do not wander about so much, but sit 



104 JOHANN HEINBIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

at home at their work. And the arithmeticians among the 
farmers are usually to be found at the tavern. 

The schoolmaster found these poor children generally much 
more capable, both in body and in mind, than he had expected. 

For this there is also a good reason. Need and poverty make 
man more reflective and shrewd than riches and superfluity, 
and teach him to make the best use of everything that will 
bring him bread. 

Gliilphi made so much use of this fact that, in everything 
he did, and in almost every word he used in the school, he had 
the distinct purpose of making use of this basis laid down by 
Nature herself for the education of the poor and the country- 
men. He was so strenuous even about the sweat of daily labor, 
that he claimed that whatever can be done for a man makes 
him useful, or reliable for skill, only so far as he has acquired 
his knowledge and skill in the sweat of his years of study ; and 
that, where this is wanting, the art and knowledge of a man is 
like a mass of foam in the sea, which often looks, at a distance, 
like a rock rising out of the abyss, but which falls as soon as 
wind and wave attack it. Therefore, he said, in education, 
thorough and strict training to the vocation must necessarily 
precede all instruction by words. 

He also maintained a close connection between this training 
to a vocation and training in manners, and asserted that the 
manners of every condition and trade, and even of the place or 
country of a man's abode, are so important to him that the 
happiness and peace of all his life depends on them. Training 
to good manners was also a chief object of his school organiza- 
tion. He would have his schoolroom as clean as a church. 
He would not even let a pane be out of the windows, or a nail 
be wrongly driven in the floor ; and still less would he permit 
the children to throw anything on the floor, eat during study, 
or anything else of the kind. He preserved strict order, even 
in the least thing; and arranged so that, even in sitting 
down and rising up, the children would not hit against one 
another. 



TEE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 105 

In muddy weather they were made to leave their shoes at the 
door, and sit in their stockings. And if their coats were muddy, 
they had to dry them in the sun or at the stove, as the case 
might be, and clean them. He himself cut their nails for many 
of them, and put the hair of most all the boys in good order ; 
and whenever any one went from writing to working, he was 
obliged to wash his hands. They had, likewise, to rinse out 
their mouths at proper times, and take care of their teeth, and 
see that their breath was not foul. All these were things they 
had known nothing about. 

When they came into the school and went out, they stepped 
up to Gliilphi, one after the other, and said to him, " God be with 
you." Then he looked at them from head to foot, and looked 
at them so that- they knew by his eye, without his saying a word, 
if there was anything wrong about them. But if this look did 
not serve to set things right, he spoke to them. When he saw 
that the parents were to blame for anything, he sent a message 
to them; and not uncommonly a child came home to its mother 
with the message, " The schoolmaster sends his respects to you, 
and asks whether you have no needles, or no thread ; or if water 
is expensive with you," and the like. 

Margaret acted as though she had been made on purpose to 
help him about these things. If a child's hair was not in good 
order, she placed it with its spinning wheel before her and braided 
it up while the child worked and studied. Most of them did not 
know how to fasten their shoes and stockings. All these things 
she showed them ; adjusted their neckcloths and their aprons, 
if they were wrong, and, if she saw a hole in their clothes, took 
a needle and thread and mended it. Just before the close of 
the school, she went through the room, praising or blaming the 
children, as they had worked well, half well, or ill. Those who 
had done well went first up to the schoolmaster, and said to him, 
" God be with you," and he then held out his hand to them and 
replied, " God be with you, my dear child ! " Those who had 
done only half well came then to him, and to them he said, 
"God be with you/' without holding out his hand to them. 



106 JOEANN HEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZI 

Lastly, those who had not done well at all had to leave the 
room before the others, without daring to go to him at all. 

If one of them came too late, he found the door shut like the 
gate of a fortress that is closed. Whether then he cried or not 
made no difference ; the master said to him, briefly, " Go home 
again, now ; it will do you good to think a long time about it. 
Everything that is done must be done at the right time, or else 
it is as if it is not done at all." 



9. He who Separates the Principles of Arithmetic and of Sus- 
ceptibility TO Truth, puts Asunder what God has Joined 

But how much soever he cared for the hearts of his children, 
he took as much care of their heads; and required that what- 
ever went into them should be as clear and lucid as the silent 
moon in the heavens. He said, " Nothing can be called teach- 
ing which does not proceed on that principle ; what is obscure, 
and deceives, and makes confused, is not teaching, but j)er vert- 
ing the mind." 

This perversion of the mind, in his children, he guarded 
against by teaching them, above all, to see and hear closely, and 
by laboriously and industriously teaching them habits of cool 
observation, and at the same time by strengthening in them the 
natural capacity which every man possesses. To this end he 
gave them much practice in arithmetic, in which he carried them 
so far, within a year, that they very soon yawned if any one 
began to talk to them about the wonderful puzzles with which 
Hartknopf's friends so easily astonished the rest of the people of 
the village. 

So true it is that the way to lead men away from error is not 
to oppose their folly with words, but to destroy the spirit of it 
within them ! To describe the night and the dark colors of its 
shadows does not help you to see; it is only by lighting a 
lamp that you can show what the night was; it is only by 
couching a cataract that you can show what the blindness has 
been. Correct seeing and correct hearing are the first steps 



THE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 107 

towards living wisely ; and arithmetic is the means by which 
nature guards us from error in our searches after truth — the 
basis of peace and prosperity, which children can secure for their 
manhood only by thoughtful and careful pursuit of their em- 
ployments. 

For such reasons, the lieutenant thought nothing so impor- 
tant as a right training of his children in arithmetic ; and he 
said, " A man's mind will not proceed well unless it gains the 
habitude of apprehending and adhering to the truth, either by 
means of much experience or of arithmetical practice, which 
Avill in great part supply the place of that habitude." 

But his methods of teaching them arithmetic are too extended 
to be given here. 

10. A Sure Means against Mean and Lying Slanders 

In this matter also he succeeded wdth the children as he de- 
sired ; and it could not but happen that one who accomplished 
so much for them should become dear to many people. But it 
was far from being the case that all were satisfied with him. 
The chief charge against him was, that he was too proud for a 
schoolmaster, and would not talk with the people at all. He 
said one thing and another to defend himself, and tried to make 
them understand that he was using his time and his lungs for 
the children ; but the farmers said that, notwithstanding all that, 
he might stop a moment or two when any one wanted to say 
something to him, and, if pride did not prevent him, he would. 

All the children, to be sure, contradicted their parents in this, 
and said that he certainly was not proud ; but they replied, 
" He may be good to you, and may be proud, nevertheless." 

But the rainy weather, in the third w^eek of his school-keep- 
ing, accomplished for him what the good children could not do, 
with all their talking. 

It was an established principle in Bonnal, that an old bridge 
in front of the schoolhouse, w^hich had been in a bad condition 
for twenty years, should not be rebuilt; and so, whenever it 
rained for two days together, the children had to get wetted 



108 JOEANN HEINBIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

almost to their knees to get to the school. But the first time 
that Gliilphi found the street so deep in water he stood out in 
the street, in the rain, as soon as the children came, and lifted 
them, one after another, over the stream. 

This looked very funny to a couple of men and their wives 
who lived just opposite the schoolhouse, and who were the very 
ones who had complained most that the schoolmaster's pride 
would scarcely let him say good-day or good-night to people. 
They found great pleasure in seeing him get wet through and 
through, in his red coat, and thought he would never keep at it 
a quarter of an hour, and expected every moment that he would 
call out to them to know whether nobody was coming to help 
him. But when he kept right on with his work, just as though 
not even a cat lived anywhere near him, to say nothing of a 
man, and was dripping wet, clothes and hair, and all over, and 
still showed no shadow of impatience, but kept carrying over 
one child after another, they began to say, behind their win- 
dows, " He must be a good-natured fool, after all, to keep it up 
so long, and we seem to have been mistaken about him. If he 
had been proud, he would certainly have stopped long ago." 

At last they crept out of their holes and went out to him, and 
said : " We did not see, before, that you were taking so much 
trouble, or we would have come out to you sooner. Go home 
and dry yourself; we will carry the children over. We can 
bear the rain better than you. And, before school is out, we 
will bring a couple of planks, tot), so that there shall be a bridge 
here, as there used to be." 

This they did not say merely, but did it. Before eleven 
o'clock there was actually a bridge erected, so that after school 
the scholars could go dry-shod over the brook. And also the 
complaints about his pride ceased ; for the two neighbors' 
wives, who had been the loudest in making them, now sang 
quite another song. 

If this seems incredible to you, reader, make an experiment 
yourself, and stand out in the rain until you are dripping wet 
for the sake of other people's children, without being called on 



THE SCHOOL IN BONNAL 109 

to do SO, or receiving anything for it; and see if those people 
do not then willingly speak good of you, except in regard to 
something very evil, or something which they cannot see and 
understand to be otherwise than bad. 

11. Foolish Words, and School Punishments 

But it was not long before the people had something else to 
complain about, and, indeed, something worse than before. The 
Hartknopf party in the village, that is, discovered that the lieu- 
tenant was not a Christian, and began quietly to make good 
and simple people in the village believe it. One of the first to 
find comfort in this story, and to endeavor to propagate it, was 
the old schoolmaster. He could not endure the thought that 
all the children should so praise and love the new school- 
master. As long as he had been schoolmaster they had hated 
him ; and he had become so used to this, in thirt}^ years, that 
he believed it must be so ; and asserted that the children, not 
being able to understand what is good for them, naturally hate 
all discipline, and consequently all schoolmasters. But he did 
not make much progress with this theory; and he fancied 
people were going to tell him that the children loved their 
present schoolmaster because he was good to them. 

This vexed him, for he could not endure all his life to have 
it flung at him that his own foolishness was the reason that the 
children did not love him, although it was the honest truth. If 
he observed the least thing which he disapproved, the first word 
was, " You are killing me, body and soul ; you will bring me 
into my grave. If you did not deserve hell for any other 
reason, you deserve it on account of me ; " and the like. 

Such language, especially to children, does not cause good 
feeling ; and they must have been much more than children to 
love a fool who spoke to them in that way at every moment. 
They knew whom they were dealing with, and when he was 
most enraged, they would say to each other, " When we kill 
again, and bring him some sausages and meat, we shall not go to 
hell any more, at least so long as he has any of them left to eat." 



110 JOHANN HEINRICH PE8TAL0ZZI 

"With the new schoohnaster the case was quite otherwise. 
His harshest reproofs to the children when they did wrong 
were, " That is not right," or " You are injuring yourself," or 
" In that way you will never arrive at any good," etc. Little as 
this was, it was effectual, because it was the truth. 

Gliilphi's punishments consisted mostly in exercises intended 
to help the faults which they were to punish. For instance, if 
a child was idle, he was made to carry stone for the guard-fence 
which the teacher was making some of the older boys con- 
struct, at the sand-meadow, or to cut firewood, etc. A for- 
getful one was made school-messenger, and for four or five 
days had to transact whatever business the teacher had in the 
village. 

Even during his punishments he was kind to the children, 
and scarcely ever talked more with them than while punishing 
them. " Is it not better for you," he would often say to a care- 
less one, " to learn to keep yourself attentive to what you do, 
than every moment to be forgetting something, and then to have 
to do everything over again ? " Then the child would often 
throw himself upon him with tears, and, with his trembling 
hand in his, would reply, " Yes, dear schoolmaster." And he 
would then answer, " Good child. Don't cry, but learn better ; 
and tell your father and mother to help you to overcome your 
carelessness, or your idleness." 

Disobedience which was not carelessness he punished by not 
speaking publicly to such a child for three or four or five days, 
but only alone with him, intimating to him at the close of 
school to remain. Impertinence and impropriety he punished 
in the same way. Wickedness, however, and lying, he pun- 
ished with the rod ; and any child punished with the rod was 
not permitted during a whole week to join in the children's 
plays ; and his name and his fault stood entered in the Register 
of Offences until he gave unmistakable evidence of improve- 
ment, when they were stricken out again. 

So great was the difference between the old and the new 
organization of the school. 



A CHAPTER FROM " CHRISTOPHER AND ELIZA'' 111 

A Chapter from "Christopher and Eliza" 

" That is my chapter, father," said EHza, when Christopher 
had read the twelfth chapter of the book. " A pious mother, 
who herself teaches her children, seems to me to be the finest 
sight on earth." 

" It is very different from any that we see in the school-room," 
said Josiah. 

" I did not mean to say that schools are not good," interposed 
Ehza. 

" Nor would I allow myself to think so," added Christopher. 

" The schoolmaster's instruction will never reach children's 
hearts in the same way as the lessons their parents teach them," 
said Josiah ; " and I am sure that in going to school there is not 
all the good that people fancy there is." 

" I fear, Josiah," said Christopher, " that you are out of your 
sphere. We ought to thank God for all the good there is in the 
world, and as for our schools, we cannot be sufficiently thankful 
for them." 

"Well spoken, master," answered Josiah. "It is well that 
there are schools ; and God forbid that I should be ungrateful 
for any good that is done to us. Yet, I think he must be a fool 
who, having plenty at home, runs about begging ; and that is 
the very thing which our villagers do, when they forget all the 
good lessons which they might teach their children at home, 
and send them every day to gather up the dry crumbs which 
are to be found in our miserable schools. I am sure that is not 
quite as it ought to be." 

" Nor is it quite as you have put it," said Christopher. 

" Nay, master," continued Josiah ; " only look it in the face, 
and you will see it the same as I do. What parents can teach 
their children is always what they most need in life ; and it is a 
pity that parents should neglect this, by trusting in the words 
which the schoolmaster makes them learn by heart. It is very 
true they may be good and wise words, and have an excellent 
meaning to them ; but, after all, they are only words, and, 



112 JOHANN EEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

coming from the mouth of a stranger, they do not come half so 
near home as a father's or a mother's words." 

" I cannot see what you aim at, Josiah," said Christopher. 

" Look, master. The great point in bringing up a child is 
that he should be well trained for his own home. He must 
learn to know and use those things on which his bread and 
happiness will depend through life ; and it seems to me very plain 
that fathers and mothers can teach that much better at home 
than any schoolmaster can in his school. No doubt the school- 
master tells the children a great many things that are right and 
good ; but they are never worth as much from his mouth as 
from that of an upright father or a pious mother. 

"The schoolmaster, for instance, will tell the child to fear 
God, and honor his father and mother, for such is the word of 
God ; but the child understands little of what he says, and gen- 
erally forgets it before he comes home. But, if at home his 
father gives him milk and bread, and his mother denies herself 
a morsel, that she may give it to him, the child feels and under- 
stands that he ought to honor his father and mother, who are so 
kind to him ; and he will not forget his father's words, when he 
tells him that such is the word of God. In the same way, if the 
child is told at school to be merciful, and to love his neighbor as 
himself, he learns the text by heart, and, perhaps, thinks of it 
for a few days, till the nice words slip from his memory. 

" At home, he sees a poor neighbor's wife, calling upon his 
mother, lamenting over her misery, her hunger, and nakedness ; 
he sees her pale countenance, her emaciated and trembling figure 
— the very image of wretchedness ; his heart throbs, his tears flow ; 
he lifts up his eyes full of grief and anxiety to his mother, as if 
he were himself starving ; he sees his mother bring refreshments 
for the jDOor sufferer, in whose looks the child now reads comfort 
and reviving lioj^e ; his anguish ceases ; his tears flow no longer ; 
he approaches her with a smiling face; the mother's gift is 
received with sobs of gratitude, which again draw tears to the 
child's eye. Here he learns what it is to be merciful, and to 
love one's neighbor. He learns it without the aid of words, by 



A CHAPTER FROM " CHRISTOPHER AND ELIZA'' 113 

the real fact ; he sees mercy instead of learning words about 
mercy." 

To this Christopher replied : " I must own I begin to think 
that too much value is put upon the schoolmaster's teaching." 

" Of course," said Josiah, " if you send your sheep up into the 
mountains, you rely upon their being well cared for by the shep- 
herd, who is paid for doing it, and you do not think of running 
after them. It is just the same thing with the school, with this 
difference : it is easy to get in pastures better food than can be 
found in stables, but it is not easy to find a school in which the 
children are better taught than they might be at home. The 
parents' teaching is the kernel of wisdom, and the schoolmas- 
ter's business is only to make a husk over it, and even then it is 
a chance if it turn out well." 

" Why, you make one's brain whirl," said Eliza. " I think 
I see now what you are after. I fancy many a poor ignorant 
mother, who now sends her children to school without thinking 
anything about it, merely because it is the custom to do so, 
would be very glad to be taught better." 

" There is yet another part to the story," said Josiah. " If the 
children must be sent to school, the schoolmaster should be an 
open-hearted, affectionate, and kind man, who would be like a 
father to the children ; a man made to open children's hearts 
and mouths, and draw forth their ideas. In most schools, how- 
ever, it is just the contrary. The master seems to shut their 
hearts and mouths, and bury their common sense. This is the 
reason why healthy and cheerful children, whose hearts are full 
of joy and gladness, hardly ever like the school ; while stupid 
dunces, who have no pleasure with other children, are the 
bright ornaments there. If there is a boy among them who 
has too much good sense to keep his eyes for hours fixed on a 
dozen letters which he hates ; or a merry girl, who, while the 
schoolmaster discourses on spiritual life, plays with her little 
hands all sorts of temporal fun under the desk, the master, in 
his wisdom, declares these the goats who care not for their ever- 
lasting salvation." 



114 JOHANN HEINBiCH PE8TAL0ZZI 

Thus spoke the good Josiah in the overflowing of his zeal 
against the nonsense of the village schools, and his master and 
mistress gave more and more attention to what he said. 

After discussing the subject more fully, the father turned to 
Fritz and said, " Well, Fritz, what have you gathered from this 
evening's conversation ? " 

" That men are foolish to ask alms outside the house, when 
there is abundance within," answered Fritz. 

"What else?" 

" That the country children ought to be educated for the 
field, the barn, the house, and not merely" for talk." 

" What more ? " asked Christopher. 

" That school knowledge is to many a child like unaccustomed 
food upon which he will not thrive." 

" Is that all ? " said his father. 

" That a father's instruction is like the kernel, and the school- 
master's, at most, like a shell protecting it, and that the common 
people need common sense most." 

" Anything more ? " 

" That the school ought to be an auxiliary to the nursery, 
where father and mother plant the germs of all virtue and all 
knowledge." 

" It has always appeared to me that cunning is not true wis- 
dom, for only honest men can possess that," said Christopher. 

" That is so," said Josiah. " True wisdom proceeds from love, 
and brings blessing and peace to its owner and to all those who 
depend on him. Cunning proceeds from selfishness and want 
of love, and brings trouble and suffering upon a man who acts 
under its influence, and to those whom he rules or serves. If 
you are anxious to observe the eflects of such cunning in a 
man, go to the poor whom he uses as his tools, and they will 
tell you how small is his wisdom. One will tell you that he 
has to praise his lean ox as a fat one, in order to induce some 
greenhorn to buy ; another has to lure a stranger into his net. 
They will also tell you that they have to speak highly of his 



A CHAPTER FROM " CHRISTOPHER AM) ELIZA " 115 

honor and virtue, even when their hearts bleed from his injus- 
tice. They must cover his sins and deny his cruelty, at least 
within his hearing and knowledge. 

" But he who indulges in such tricks, or incites others to 
them, feels flattered if people talk of his keen understanding, 
merely because he practices his wit day and night in matters 
with which honest people will have nothing to do. On the 
other hand, he shows himself often quite foolish and inex- 
perienced in imj)ortant matters with which honest men are 
thoroughly familiar. No scoundrel has ever been able to keep 
that admixture of folly and madness which characterizes vice 
always under his control, so that it will not ooze out when he 
least expects it." 

" What do you think is the reason that men live so unwisely 
till their last hour comes ? " asked Eliza. 

"The neglect of home, without doubt," answered Josiah. 
" Man must have for his heart a hearth, where the fire never 
goes out ; there he must get strength, rest, and refreshment. 
After leaving his home, he goes to his work with new courage. 
Love of mankind is not nurtured in the barren regions of a 
vagabond life ; it requires fostering care in the sanctuary of 
home, as the noblest and tenderest plants require the greatest 
care at the hand of the gardener. But when the tender plant 
of home-grown virtue has taken root, let it be transferred to 
any soil, and it will thrive. If one behaves well as father, 
mother, son, you may trust him anywhere, although he may 
change his relations ; since the propelling motive of his actions 
will always be the same, whether you call it duty, obedience, or 
tender affection." 

" Heed my words, Fritz," said Eliza, " and do not scoff at any- 
thing which is sacred to thy fellow-men, and necessary to their 
peace and welfare ; which protects good order in society, and 
renders the last hours of man serene." 

" Yes, my son," added Christopher, " you must fear God, love 



116 JOHANN HEINRIGH PE8TAL0ZZI 

your parents, and honor your superiors, if you would wish to 
fare well on earth." 

" Do so, my dear boy, with an innocent and simple heart," 
said Josiah. " Yet never be afraid to search after truth and to 
stand by it; to oppose him who uses arbitrary power, and 
wishes to circumvent you with lies in order to effect wrong. 
Least of all, do not suffer yourself to be blinded by priests, when, 
under the name of religion, you see them only intent on fur- 
thering their own interests. When they teach you immortality, 
then listen to them in faith and gratitude, for it is God's word. 
If you hope to be pious, abhor the man who weakens the simple 
faith of the people in immortality, and ridicules the word of 
God in his intercourse with the poor and helpless, who are most 
in want of it. Such a man is like him who despises bread and 
feeds on husks. Oh, flee from the insane one, who scoffs at that 
which refreshes and comforts so many thousands of thy breth- 
ren. The hope of immortality lies deep in the inmost soul, and 
he who teaches it teaches the word of God." 

" The greatest thing that religion can give us is strength for 
all that is good and useful," said Christopher. " Religion ought 
to give me the conviction that on leaving earth I leave nothing, 
that my soul absorbs its cares, and that my hopes reach beyond 
this temporal abode; but for this very reason it must enable 
me to use my strength for the benefit of my family and my race. 

"Religion does not call men away from the duties of this 
earth, but it gives them strength to the last moment to take 
care of what has been intrusted to them. Did not Christ, when 
on the cross, show his care for his earthly mother by recom- 
mending her to the care of his favorite disciple? I may be 
misunderstood, and perhaps do not express accurately my idea, 
when I say that man is not made for religion, but religion for 
man. Religion is an essence which takes possession of a man's 
soul, and leads him away from his own carnal tendencies ; it 
consists rather in powers than in words ; it is a storehouse full 
of good instruments, rather than a saloon filled with charming 
and fascinating images. That which presents itself to men 



A CHAPTER FROM ''CHRISTOPHER AND ELIZA'' 117 

as an idol with which to make a constant display, is not 
religion. 

" The way to heaven is by fulfilling all our duties on earth ; 
and the neglect of these can only be retrieved to some extent 
while man is well and active, but never on a sick-bed at the 
approach of death. Our forefathers were wiser in this respect 
than we. One proof of this is that they generally disposed of 
their property while still in health. Not only were wife and 
children remembered, but also servants, institutions, the poor, 
and everything which the dictates of humanity as well as re- 
ligion had inspired in their hearts. In our days it is not so. 
Death is allowed to surprise many, and they are unable to do 
what they intended for their family and fellow-men. We often 
hear people say, ' If father or mother had disposed of this or the 
other matter, we should have been spared much care and vex- 
ation.' It is but a shallow excuse that the departed ones were 
so occupied with spiritual things that worldly ones were for- 
gotten." 

" I have known people," said Christopher, " who, unsolicited, 
have promised to take charge of children soon to become 
orphans. I have also seen this sacred duty neglected. To un- 
derstand these seeming contradictions, we must assume that all 
rnen have moments in which they make good resolutions ; but, 
unless a man is thoroughly firm and honest, these good resolu- 
tions are transitory as the light of the sun when it rises in the 
splendor of the morning, while the sky, with the exception of a 
narrow strip along the horizon, is covered with rain clouds. 
These clouds approach from all sides; the sunlight is extin- 
guished; the whole heavens become gray, and the finer the 
illumination, the more will the rain fall." 



WILLIAM COWPER 

1731-1800 

William Cowper, " the most popular poet of his generation and the 
best of English letter writers," was born in 1731, at Berkhampstead, in 
Bedfordshire, England. His father was rector of the parish church in 
the village. His mother, who was descended from the throne, was a 
lady of rare worth and beauty. She died when her son was six years 
of age. Cowper's grief at this bereavement is touchingly described in 
his "Lines on Receipt of his Mother's Picture." At the. age of ten he 
was sent to Westminster School, where he remained for eight years, 
diligently storing his mind with the treasures of learning. For the 
associations of such a school he was by nature wholly unfitted. Always 
morbidly sensitive, he was often upon the border of insanity, and more 
than once in his life he seemed hopelessly deranged. The system of 
" fagging" at the schools, now generally abolished (though it still has 
in England many defenders, who regard it as a valuable means of dis- 
cipline), was in Cowper's day at its height. He never recalled his 
school-days without disgust, and even horror. He became a vehement 
opponent and critic of the schools, and counseled parents to educate 
their sons at home. 

In his " Tirocinium," which is a terrific onslaught upon the then pre- 
vailing system of education, he draws a picture of the school as it 
appeared to a nervous, timid, shrinking youth, who was wholly unable 
to comprehend the strong, lusty life and spirits of other boys. Cowper 
is preeminently the home poet of England; yet, strange to say, he 
can scarcely be said to have ever possessed a home. In 1765, after 
various failures and discouragements, and when half mad with melan- 
choly, he went to reside with a clergyman, Mr. Unwin, at Hunt- 
ingdon, where he found congenial friends and surroundings. He 
remained permanently with the Unwin household. Mr. Unwin died in 
1767, and his family removed to the village of Olney, in Buckingham- 
shire, where most of Cowper's voluminous literary work was per- 
formed. Mrs. Unwin watched over him as a mother might care for an 
afflicted child ; and Lady Austen, a most valued friend, cheered him 
with her light-heartedness and encouraged him to continued literary 
effort. At Lady Austen's solicitation he composed his greatest poem, 
" The Task." It was she who related to him the story of John Gilpin, 
which, in a moment of merriment, he retold in rhyme. Cowper 
118 



CHABAGTERIZATION 119 

translated the Iliad, with a high degree of success. He wrote a Bumber 
of hymns, that are highly prized as aids to Christian worship. He died 
in 1800, having survived by two years his faithful friend and guardian, 
Mary Unwin. 

Characterization 

The nature of Cowper's works makes us peculiarly identify the poet 
and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and 
weaned from the vanities of the world ; and as an original writer, he 
left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion for 
those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his 
own earnest feelings in behalf of moral and religious truth. 

His language has such a masculine, idiomatic strength, and his 
manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so 
much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper 
conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart ; and 
of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned 
and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being whose 
j&ne spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be 
polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an 
unworldly degree of purity and simplicity. Thomas Campbell. 

Tirocinium, a Latin word, signifies the first military service, or the 
first campaign, of a young soldier. Cowper'« ' ' Tirocinium " is perhaps 
the most powerful arraignment of schools that has ever been made in 
any nation or age. Cowper's preface to a book of his poems refers to 
the " Tirocinium " in the following words : "In the poem on the sub- 
ject of education, he [the author] would be very sorry to stand suspected 
of having aimed his censure at any particular school. His objections 
are such as naturally apply themselves to schools in general. If there 
were not, as for the most part there is, willful neglect in those who man- 
age them, and an omission even of such discipline as they are suscep- 
tible of, the objects are yet too numei'ous for minute attention ; and the 
aching hearts of ten thousand parents, mourning under the bitterest of 
disappointments, attest the truth of the allegation. His quarrel, there- 
fore, is with the mischief at large, and not* with any particular instance 
of it." Though written by the greatest English poet of his time, and 
by one of the most truthful of men, the descriptions are probably 
exaggerated as applied even to the schools of Cowper's time. More- 
over, the remedy he proposes — the general substitution of private 
instruction for that of schools — is fallacious, and contrary to our ideas 
of public policy. The poem serves a valuable purpose, however, as a 
warning to all who have in charge the training of youth. 



120 WILLIAM GOWPEB 

Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools 

178 5 

To the Rev. William Cawthorne Unwin, rector of Stock in Essex, 
the tutor of his two sons, the following poem recommending- private 
tuition in preference to an education at school, is inscribed by his 
affectionate friend. William Cowper. 

Olnet, November 6tli, 1784. 

It is not from his form, in which we trace 

Strength join'd with beauty, dignity with grace, • 

That man, the master of this globe, derives 

His right of empire over all that lives. 

That form, indeed, the associate of a mind 

Vast in its powers, ethereal in its kind. 

That form, the labor of Almighty skill. 

Framed for the service of a freeborn will, 

Asserts precedence, and bespeaks control, 

But borrows all its grandeur from the soul. 

Hers is the state, the splendor and the throne, 

An intellectual kingdom, all her own. 

For her, the memory fills her ample page 

With truths pour'd down from every distant age. 

For her amasses an unbounded store. 

The wisdom of great nations now no more. 

Though laden, not encumber'd with her spoil, 

Laborious, yet unconscious of her toil. 

When copiously supplied then most enlarged. 

Still to be fed, and not to be surcharged. • 

For her, the fancy, roving unconfined. 

The present Muse of every pensive mind, 

Works magic wonders, adds a brighter hue 

To nature's scenes than nature ever knew ; 

At her command winds rise and waters roar ; 

Again she lays them slumbering on the shore ; 

With flower and fruit the wilderness supplies, 

Or bids the rocks in ruder pomp arise. 



TIROCINIUM; OB. A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 121 

For her, the judgment, umpire in the strife 
That grace and nature have to wage through life, 
Quick-sighted arbiter of good and ill. 
Appointed sage preceptor to the will, 
Condemns, approves, and, with a faithful voice, 
Guides the decision of a doubtful choice. 



Why did the fiat of a God give birth 
To yon fair Sun and his attendant Earth ? 
And when, descending, he resigns the skies. 
Why takes the gentler Moon her turn to rise. 
Whom Ocean feels, through all his countless waves, 
And owns her power on every shore he laves? 
Why do the seasons still enrich the year. 
Fruitful and young as in their first career? 
Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, 
Rocked in the cradle of the western breeze ; 
Summer in haste the thriving charge receives, 
Beneath the shade of her expanded leaves. 
Till Autumn's fiercer heats and plenteous dews 
Dye them at last in all their glowing hues. — 
'Twere wild profusion all, and bootless waste. 
Power misemployed, munificence misplaced, 
Had not its Author dignified the plan. 
And crowned it with the majesty of man. 
Thus formed, thus placed, intelligent and taught, 
Look where he will, the wonders God has wrought, 
The wildest scorner of his Maker's laws 
Finds in a sober moment time to pause, 
To press the important question on his heart, 
" Why form'd at all, and wherefore as thou art ? " 



If man be what he seems, this hour a slave, 
The next, mere dust and ashes in the grave ; 



122 WILLIAM COWPEB 

Endued with reason only to descry 
His crimes and follies with an aching eye ; 
With passions, just that he may prove, with pain, 
The force he spends against their fury vain ; 
And if, soon after having burned, by turns, 
With every lust with which frail Nature burns, 
His being end where death dissolves the bond. 
The tomb take all, and all be blank beyond ; 
Then he, of all that Nature has brought forth. 
Stands self-impeached the creature of least worth, 
And useless while he lives, and when he dies. 
Brings into doubt the wisdom of the skies. 



Truths that the learned pursue with eager thought 
Are not important always as dear-bought, 
Proving at last, though told in pompous strains, 
A childish waste of philosophic pains ; 
But truths on which depend our main concern, 
That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn. 
Shine by the side of every path we tread 
With such a lustre, he that runs may read. 
'Tis true, that if to trifle life away 
Down to the sunset of their latest day, 
Then perish on futurity's wide shore 
Like fleeting exhalations, found no more, 
Were all that Heaven required of human kind, 
And all the plan their destiny designed, 
What none could reverence all might justly blame. 
And man would breathe but for his Maker's shame. 
But reason heard, and nature well perused, 
At once the dreaming mind is disabused. 
If all we find possessing earth, sea, air. 
Reflect his attributes who placed them there. 
Fulfil the purpose, and appear design'd 
Proofs of the wisdom of the all-seeing Mind, 



TIROCINIUM; OB, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 123 

'Tis plain, the creature whom he chose to invest 
With kingship and dominion o'er the rest, 
Received his nobler nature, and was made 
Fit for the power in which he stands array'd, 
That, first or last, hereafter, if not here. 
He too might make his Author's wisdom clear, 
Praise him on earth or, obstinately dumb, 
Suffer his justice in a world to come. 
This once believed, 'twere logic misapplied 
To prove a consequence by none denied, 
That we are bound to cast the minds of youth 
Betimes into the mould of heavenly trutii. 
That taught of God they may indeed be wise, 
Nor, ignorantly wandering, miss the skies. 



In early days the conscience has, in most, 
A quickness, which in later life is lost. 
Preserved from guilt by salutary fears, 
Or, guilty, soon relenting into tears. 
Too careless, often, as our years proceed. 
What friends we sort with, or what books we read, 
Our parents yet exert a prudent care 
To feed our infant minds with proper fare. 
And wisely store the nursery by degrees 
A¥ith wholesome learning, yet acquired with ease. 
Neatly secured from being soiled or torn 
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn, 
A book (to please us at a tender age 
'Tis called a book, though but a single page) 
Presents the jDrayer the Savior deigned to teach, 
Which children use, and parsons — when they preach. 
Lisping our syllables, we scramble next 
Through moral narrative, or sacred text. 
And learn with wonder how this world began, 
Who made, who marred, and who has ransomed man; 



124 WILLIAM COWPEB 

Points which, unless the Scripture made them plain, 
The wisest heads might agitate in vain. 



thou, ^ whom, borne on Fancy's eager wing 
Back to the season of life's happy spring, 
I pleased remember, and, while memory yet 
Holds fast her office here, can ne'er forget ; 
Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale 
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail ; 
Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style, 
May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile, 
Witty, and well-employed, and like thy Lord, 
Speaking in parables his slighted word, 
I name thee not, lest so despised a name 
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame ; 
Yet e'en in transitory life's late day. 
That mingles all my brown with sober gray. 
Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road, 
And guides the Progress of the soul to God. 
'Twere well with most, if books that could engage 
Their childhood, pleased them at a riper age ; 
The man, approving what had charmed the boy, 
Would die at last in comfort, peace, and joy. 
And not with curses on his art who stole 
The gem of truth from his unguarded soul. 

Would you your son should be a sot or dunce. 
Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once ; 
That in good time, the stripling's finished taste 
For loose expense and fashionable waste 
Should prove your ruin, and his own at last. 
Train him in public with a mob of boys, 
Childish in mischief only and in noise, 

1 John Bunyau 



TIROCINIUM; OR, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 125 

Else of a mannish growth, and five in ten 
In infidelity and lewdness, men. 
There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old, 
That authors are most useful pawned or sold ; 
That pedantry is all that schools impart, 
But taverns teach the knowledge of the heart ; 
There waiter Dick, with bacchanalian lays, 
Shall win his heart, and have his drunken praise, 
His counsellor and bosom-friend shall prove. 

Schools, unless discipline were doubly strong, 

Detain their adolescent charge too long ; 

The management of tyros of eighteen 

Is difficult, their punishment obscene. 

The stout, tall captain, whose superior size 

The minor heroes view with envious eyes. 

Becomes their pattern, upon whom they fix 

Their whole attention, and ape all his tricks. 

His pride, that scorns to obey or to submit, 

With them is courage ; his effrontery wit ; 

His wild excursions, window-breaking feats, 

Robbery of gardens, quarrels in the streets. 

His hairbreadth 'scapes, and all his daring schemes, 

Transport them, and are made their favorite themes; 

In little bosoms such achievements strike 

A kindred spark, they burn to do the like. 

Thus, half accomplished ere he yet begin 

To show the peeping down upon his chin. 

And as maturity of years comes on. 

Made just the adept that you designed your son. 

To insure the perseverance of his course. 

And give your monstrous project all its force, 

Send him to college. If he there be tamed. 

Or in one article of vice reclaimed. 

Where no regard of ordinance is shown, 

Or look'd for now, the fault must be his own. 



126 WILLIAM GOWPBR 

Some sneaking virtue lurks in him no doubt, 

nor drinking-bout, 
Nor gambling practices can find it out. 

Such youths of spirit, and that spirit too, 
Ye nurseries of our boys, we owe to you. 
Though from ourselves the mischief more proceeds, 
For public schools 'tis public folly feeds. 
The slaves of custom and establish'd mode, 
With pack-horse constancy we keep the road 
Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells, 
True to the jingling of our leader's bells. 
To follow foolish precedents, and wink 
With both our eyes, is easier than to think, 
And such an age as ours balks no expense 
Except of caution and of common sense ; 
Else, sure, notorious fact and proof so jDlain 
Would turn our steps into a wiser train. 

I blame not those who with what care they can 

O'erwatch the numerous and unruly clan, 

Or if I blame, 'tis only that they dare 

Promise a work of which they must despair. 

Have ye, ye sage intendants of the whole, 

An ubiquarian presence and control, 

Elisha's eye, that when Gehazi stray'd 

Went with him, and saw all the game he play'd ? 

Yes, ye are conscious ; and on all the shelves 

Your pupils strike upon, have struck yourselves. 

Or if by nature sober, ye had then, 

Boys as ye were, the gravity of men. 

Ye knew at least, by constant proofs address'd 

To ears and eyes, the vices of the rest, 

But ye connive at what ye cannot cure. 

And evils not to be endured, endure, 



TIROCINIUM ; OR, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 127 

Lest power exerted, but without success, 

Should make the little ye retain still less. 

Ye once were justly famed for bringing forth 

Undoubted scholarship and genuine worth, 

And in the firmament of fame still shines 

A glory bright as that of all the signs, 

Of poets raised by you, and statesmen, and divines. 

Peace to them all ! those brilliant times are fled. 

And no such lights are kindling in their stead. 

Our striplings shine indeed, but with such rays 

As set the midnight riot in a blaze, 

And seem, if judged by their exj^ressive looks. 

Deeper in none than in their surgeons' books. 



Say, Muse (for education made the song, 
No Muse can hesitate or linger long). 
What causes move us, knowing, as we must, 
That these menageries all fail their trust. 
To send our sons to scout and scamper there, 
While colts and j)uppies cost us so much care? 
Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise. 
We love the play-place of our early days. 
The scene is touching, and the heart is stone 
That feels not at that sight, and feels at none. 
The wall on which we tried our graving skill, 
The very name we carved subsisting still ; 
The bench on wdiich we sat while deep employed. 
Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed ; 
The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot. 
Playing our games, and on the very spot. 
As happy as we once, to kneel and draw 
The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw ; 
To pitch the ball into the grounded hat, 
Or drive it devious with a dexterous pat; 
The pleasing spectacle at once excites 



128 WILLIAM GOWPEB 

Such recollection of our own delights, 

That viewing it we seem almost to obtain 

Our innocent sweet simple years again. 

This fond attachment to the well-known place, 

Whence first we started into life's long race. 

Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, 

We feel it e'en in age, and at our latest day. 

Hark ! how the sire of chits, whose future share 

Of classic food begins to be his care, 

With his own likeness placed on either knee, 

Indulges all a father's heart-felt glee. 

And tells them, as he strokes their silver locks. 

That they must soon learn Latin, and to box ; 

Then, turning, he regales his listening wife 

With all the adventures of his early life, 

His skill in coachmanship, or driving chaise. 

In bilking tavern-bills, and spouting plays ; 

What shifts he used, detected in a scrape. 

How he was flogged, or had the luck to escape ; 

What sums he lost at play, and how he sold 

Watch, seals, and all — till all his pranks are told. 

Retracing thus his frolics ('tis a name 

That palliates deeds of folly and of shame), 

He gives the local bias all its sway, 

Resolves that where he play'd his sons shall play. 

And destines their bright genius to be shown 

Just in the scene where he display'd his own. 

The meek and bashful boy will soon be taught 

To be as bold and forward as he ought ; 

The rude will scuffle through with ease enough, 

Great schools suit best the sturdy and the rough. 

Ah happy designation, prudent choice, 

The event is sure, expect it and rejoice ! 

Soon see your wish fulfilled in either child. 

The pert made perter, and the tame made wild. 



TIROCINIUM; OR. A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 129 

Our public hives of puerile resort 
That are of chief and most approved report, 
To such base hopes in many a sordid soul 
Owe their repute in part, but not the whole. 
A principle, whose proud pretensions pass 
Unquestion'd though the jewel be but glass — 
That with a world not often over-nice 
Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice. 
Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, 
Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride — 
Contributes most perhaps to enhance their fame, 
And emulation ^ is its specious name. 
Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal 
Feel all the rage that female rivals feel. 
The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes 

' But is there not a good sense and a bad sense associated with the term emu- 
lation ? — and have not these eager disputants fallen into the same error in this 
matter that the two knights committed, when they immolated each other in a 
contest about the question whether a shield was gold or silver, when each had 
seen hut one side of it 9 I incline to the opinion that this is the case, and that 
those who wax so warm in this contest would do well to give us at the outset a 
careful definition of the term emulation, as they intend to use it. This would 
perhaps save themselves a great deal of toil, and their readers a great deal of 
perplexity. Now, it seems to me, the truth of this question lies within a 
nutshell. If emulation means a desire for improvement, progress, growth, an 
ardent wish to rise above one's present condition or attainments, or even an 
aspiration to attain to eminence in the school or in the world, it is a laudable 
motive. This is self-emulation. It presses the individual on to surpass him- 
self. It compares his present condition with what he would be — with what he 
ought to be; and, "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching 
forth unto those which are before," he presses toward the mark for the prize. An 
ardor kindled by the praiseworthy examples of others, inciting to imitate them, 
or to equal or even excel them, without the desire of depressing them, is the 
sense in which the apostle uses the term (Romans xi. 14), when he says, " If by 
any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save 
some of them." If this be the meaning of emulation, it is every way a worthy 
principle to be appealed to in school. This principle exists to a greater or- less 
extent in the mind of every child, and may very safely be strengthened by being 
called by the teacher into lively exercise, provided, always, that the eminence 
is sought from a desire to be useful, and not from a desire of self-glorification. — 
Page's "Theory and Practice of Teaching y 
S. M. — 9 



130 WILLIAM COWPJSR 

Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize. 
The spirit of that competition burns 
With all varieties of ill by turns. 
Each vainly magnifies, his own success, 
Resents his fellow's, wishes it were less, 
Exults in his miscarriage if he fail, 
Deems his reward too great if he prevail, 
And labors to surpass him day and night. 
Less for improvement than to tickle spite. 
The spur is powerful, and I grant its force ; 
It pricks the genius forward in its course, 
Allows short time for play, and none for sloth. 
And, felt alike by each, advances both. 
But judge where so much evil intervenes, 
The end, though plausible, not worth the means. 
Weigh, for a moment, classical desert 
Against a heart depraved and temper hurt. 
Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong 
Done to the nobler part affects it long ; 
And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause 
If you can crown a discipline that draws 
Such mischiefs after it with much applause. 

Connection formed for interest, and endeared 
By selfish views, thus censured and cashiered ; 
And Emulation, as engendering hate. 
Doomed to a no less ignominious fate : 
The props of such j)roud seminaries fall. 
The Jachin and the Boaz of them all. 
Great schools rejected, then, as those that swell 
Beyond a size that can be managed well. 
Shall royal institutions miss the bays, 
And small academies win all the praise ? 

Force not my drift beyond its just intent, 
I praise a school as Pope a government ; 



TIROCINIUM ; OR, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 131 

So take my judgment in his language dressed, 
" Whate'er is best administered is best." 
Few boys are born with talents that excel, 
But all are capable of living well. 
Then ask not, whether limited or large ? 
But, watch they strictly, or neglect their charge ? 
If anxious only that their boys may learn, 
While morals languish, a despised concern. 
The great and small deserve one common blame, 
Different in size, but in effect the same. 
Much zeal in virtue's cause all teachers boast. 
Though motives of mere lucre sway the most ; 
Therefore in towns and cities they abound, 
For there the game they seek is easiest found ; 
Though there, in spite of all that care can do. 
Traps to catch youth are most abundant too. 

If shrewd, and of a well-constructed brain, 

Keen in pursuit, and vigorous to retain. 

Your son come forth a prodigy of skill, 

As wheresoever taught, so formed, he will. 

The pedagogue, with self-complacent air. 

Claims more than half the praise as his due share ; 

But if, with all his genius, he betray. 

Not more intelligent than loose and gay. 

Such vicious habits as disgrace his name. 

Threaten his health, his fortune, and his fame. 

Though want of due restraint alone have bred 

The symptoms that you see with so much dread, 

Unenvied there, he may sustain alone 

The whole reproach, the fault was all his own. 

Oh ! 'tis a sight to be with joy perused 
By all whom sentiment has not abused. 
New-fangled sentiment, the boasted grace 
Of those who never feel in the right place, 



132 WILLIAM COWPEB 

A sight surpassed by none that we can show, 
Though Vestris on one leg still shine below, 
A father blest with an ingenuous son, 
Father and friend and tutor all in one. 
How ? turn again to tales long since forgot, 
^sop and Phsedrus and the rest ? — why not ? 
He will not blush that has a father's heart. 
To take in childish plays a childish part. 
But bends his sturdy back to any toy 
That youth takes pleasure in, to please his boy ; 
Then why resign into a stranger's hand 
' A task as much within your own command, 
That God and nature and your interest too 
Seem with one voice to delegate to you ? 
Why hire a lodging in a house unknown 
For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your 

own? 
This second weaning, needless as it is, 
How does it lacerate both your heart and his ! 
The indented stick that loses day by day 
Notch after notch, till all are smooth 'd away. 
Bears witness long ere his dismission come, 
With what intense desire he wants his home. 
But though the joys he hopes beneath your roof 
Bid fair enough to answer in the proof, 
Harmless and safe and natural as they are, 
A disappointment waits him even there : 
Arrived he feels an unexpected change, 
He blushes, hangs his head, is shy and strange, 
No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease 
His favorite stand between his father's knees, 
But seeks the corner of some distant seat, 
And eyes the door, and watches a retreat, 
And, least familiar where he should be most, 
Feels all his happiest privileges lost. 
Alas, poor boy ! — the natural effect 



TIROCINIUM; OR, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 133 

Of love by absence chilled into respect. 

Say, what accomplishments at school acquired 

Brings he to sweeten fruits so undesired ? 

Thou well deservest an alienated son, 

Unless thy conscious heart acknowledge — none ; 

None that in thy domestic snug recess, 

He had not made his own with more address. 

Though some perhaps that shock thy feeling mind, 

And better never learn'd, or left behind. 

Add too, that thus estranged thou canst obtain 

By no kind arts his confidence again, 

That here begins with most that long complaint 

Of filial frankness lost, and love grown faint, 

"Which, oft neglected in life's waning years, 

A parent pours into regardless ears. 

Like caterpillars dangling under trees 
By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, 
Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace 
The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, 
While every worm industriously weaves 
And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves ; 
So numerous are the follies that annoy 
The mind and heart of every sprightly boy, 
Imaginations noxious and perverse. 
Which admonition can alone disperse. 
The encroaching nuisance asks a faithful hand. 
Patient, affectionate, of high command. 
To check the procreation of a breed 
Sure to exhaust the plant on which they feed. 

'Tis not enough that Greek or Koman page 
At stated hours his freakish thoughts engage. 
E'en in his pastimes he requires a friend 
To warn, and teach him safely to unbend, 



134 WILLIAM GOWPEB 

O'er all his pleasures gently to preside, 
Watch his emotions and control their tide, 
And levying thus, and with an easy sway, 
A tax of profit from his very play, 
To impress a value, not to be erased, 
On moments squandered else, and running all to waste. 
And seems it nothing in a father's eye 
That unimproved those many moments fly? 
And is he well content his son should find 
' No nourishment to feed his growing mind. 
But conjugated verbs, and nouns declined? 
For such is all the mental food purveyed 
By public hackneys in the schooling trade; 
Who feed a pupil's intellect with store 
Of syntax truly, but with little more, 
, Dismiss their cares when they dismiss their flock, 
Machines themselves, and governed by a clock. 

Perhaps a father blessed with any brains" 

Would deem it no abuse, or waste of pains. 

To improve this diet, at no great expense, 

With savory truth and wholesome common sense; 

To lead his son for prosj^ects of delight. 

To some not steep, though philosophic, height, 

Thence to exhibit to his wondering eyes 

Yon circling worlds, their distance, and their size, 

The moons of Jove, and Saturn's belted ball, 

And the harmonious order of them all ; 

To show him in an insect or a flower, 

Such microscopic proof of skill and power, 

As, hid from ages past, God now displays 

To combat atheists with in modern days; 

To spread the earth before him and commend, 

With designation of the finger's end. 

Its various parts to his attentive note, 

Thus bringing home to him the most remote; 



TIBOGimUM; OR, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 135 

To teach his heart to glow with generous flame, 

Caught from the deeds of men of ancient fame ; 

And more than all, with commendation due, 

To set some living worthy in his view, 

Whose fair example may at once inspire 

A wish to copy what he must admire. 

Such knowledge, gained betimes, and which appears, 

Though solid, not too weighty for his years. 

Sweet in itself, and not forbidding sport. 

When health demands it, of athletic sort, 

Would make him what some lovely boys have been, 

And more than one perhaps that I have seen, 

An evidence and reprehension both 

Of the mere schoolboy's lean and tardy growth. 



Art thou a man professionally tied. 
With all thy faculties elsewhere applied. 
Too busy to intend a meaner care 
Than how to enrich thyself and next, thine heir; 
Or art thou (as though rich, perhaps thou art) 
But poor in knowledge, having none to impart, — 
Behold that figure, neat, though plainly clad. 
His sprightly mingled with a shade of sad. 
Not of a nimble tongue, though now and then 
Heard to articulate like other men. 
No jester, and yet lively in discourse. 
His phrase well chosen, clear, and full of force. 
And his address, if not quite French in ease. 
Not English stiff, but frank, and form'd to please, 
Low in the world because he scorns its arts, 
A man of letters, manners, morals, parts, 
Unpatronized, and therefore little known. 
Wise for himself and his few friends alone, 
In him, thy well-appointed proxy see. 
Armed for a work too difficult for thee, 



136 WILLIAM GOWPEB 

Prepared by taste, by learning, and true worth, 
To form thy son, to strike his genius forth, 
Beneath thy roof, beneath thine eye to prove 
The force of discipline when back'd by love ; ^ 
To double all thy pleasure in thy child. 
His mind informed, his morals undefiled. 
Safe under such a wing, the boy shall show 
No spots contracted among grooms below. 
Nor taint his speech with meannesses design'd 
By footman Tom for witty and refined. 
There, — in his commerce with the liveried herd 
Lurks the contagion chiefly to be fear'd. 



To you, then, tenants of life's middle state, 
Securely placed between the small and great, 
Whose character, yet undebauched, retains 
Two thirds of all the virtue that remains, 
Who, wise yourselves, desire your sons should learn 
Your wisdom and your ways — to you I turn. 
Look round you on a world perversely blind ; 
See what contempt is fallen on humankind ; 
See wealth abused, and dignities misplaced, 
Great titles, oflices, and trusts disgraced. 
Long lines of ancestry, renowned of old. 
Their noble qualities all quenched and cold; 
See Bedlam's closeted and handcuffed charge 
Surpassed in frenzy by the mad at large ; 
See great commanders making war a trade, 
Great lawyers, lawyers without study made; 

' It will be seen that Cowper's plan, like Rousseau's, requires a personal men- 
tor, rather than a school-teacher. The ideal mentor is beautifully portrayed in 
Fenelon's unique (French) classic, " lelemaque," in which the instructor of the 
son of Ulysses is at once a teacher, a monitor, a companion — a guardian angel. 
Mentor, in the story, is not a schoolmaster, yet is a type of what the ideal school- 
master should be, in person; and it is impossible to dissociate in our minds the 
two ideals. 



TIROCINIUM ; OR, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 137 

Churchmen, in whose esteem their best employ 

Is odious, and their wages all their joy. 

Who, far enough from furnishing their shelves 

With Gospel lore, turn infidels themselves ; 

See womanhood despised, and manhood shamed 

With infamy too nauseous to be named, 

Fops at all corners, ladylike in mien, 

Civeted fellows, smelt ere they are seen, 

Else coarse and rude in manners, and their tongue 

On fire with curses and with nonsense hung. 

See volunteers in all the vilest arts 

Men well endowed, of honourable parts, 

Design'd by nature wise, but self-made fools ; 

All these, and more like these, were bred at schools. 

And if it chance, as sometimes chance it will. 

That though school bred, the boy be virtuous still, 

Such rare exceptions shining in the dark, 

Prove rather than impeach the just remark, 

As here and there a twinkling star descried 

Serves but to show how black is all beside. 

Now look on him whose very voice in tone 

Just echoes thine, whose features are thine own, 

And stroke his polish'd cheek of purest red. 

And lay thine hand upon his flaxen head, 

And say, — " My boy, the unwelcome hour is come, 

When thou, transplanted from thy genial home. 

Must find a colder soil and bleaker air. 

And trust for safety to a stranger's care. 

What character, what turn thou wilt assume 

From constant converse with I know not whom ; 

Who there will court thy friendship, with what views, 

And, artless as thou art, whom thou wilt choose ; 

Though much depends on what thy choice shall be, 

Is all chance-medley, and unknown to me." 

Canst thou, the tear just trembling on thy lids, 



138 WILLIAM COWPEB 

And while the dreadful risk foreseen forbids; 

Free, too, and under no constraining force. 

Unless the sway of custom warp thy course ; 

Lay such a stake upon the losing side, 

Merely to gratify so blind a guide ? 

Thou canst not ! Nature, pulling at thine heart. 

Condemns the unfatherly, the imprudent j^art. 

Thou wouldst not, deaf to Nature's tenderest plea, 

Turn him adrift upon a rolling sea. 

Nor say, — "Go thither; " — conscious that there lay 

A brood of asps, or quicksands, in his way ; 

Then, only governed by the self-same rule 

Of natural pity, send him not to school. 

No ! — guard him better. Is he not thine own, 
Thyself in miniature, thy flesh, thy bone? 
And hopest thou not ('tis ever}^ father's hope) 
That, since th}^ strength must with thy years elope, 
And thou wilt need some comfort to assuage 
Health's last farewell, a staff of thine old age, 
That then, in recompense of all thy cares. 
Thy child shall show respect to thy gray hairs, 
Befriend thee, of all other friends bereft, 
And give thy life its only cordial left ? 
Aware, then, how much danger intervenes. 
To compass that good end, forecast the means. 
His heart, now passive, yields to thy command ; 
Secure it thine, its key is in thine hand. 
If thou desert thy charge, and throw it wide, 
Nor heed what guests there enter and abide, 
Complain not if attachments lewd and base 
Supplant thee in it, and usurp thy place. 
But if thou guard its sacred chambers sure 
From vicious inmates and delights impure. 
Either his gratitude shall hold him fast, 
And keep him warm and filial to the last, 



TIBOCINIUM ; OB, A REVIEW OF SCHOOLS 139 

Or if he prove unkind (as who can say 
But, being man, and therefore frail, he may), 
One comfort yet shall cheer thine aged heart, 
Howe'er he slight thee, thou hast done thy part. 

" Oh barbarous ! wouldst thou with a Gothic hand 

Pull down the schools — what! — all the schools i'th'land? 

Or throw them up to livery-nags and grooms ? 

Or turn them into shops and auction rooms ? " 

A captious question, sir, (and yours is one), 

Deserves an answer similar, or none. 

Wouldst thou, possessor of a flock, employ 

(Apprised that he is such) a careless boy. 

And feed him well, and give him handsome pay, 

Merely to sleep, and let them run astray? 

Survey our schools and colleges, and see 

A sight not much unlike my simile. 

From education, as the leading cause, 

The public character its color draws. 

Thence the prevailing manners take their cast, 

Extravagant or sober, loose or chaste. 

And though I would not advertise them yet, 

Nor write on each — This Building to he Let, 

Unless the world were all prepared to embrace 

A plan well worthy to supply their place. 

Yet backward as they are, and long have been, 

To cultivate and keep the morals clean, 

(Forgive the crime) I wish them, I confess, 

Or better managed, or encouraged less. 

The Sage Called "Discipline" 

(From "The Task") 

In colleges and halls,^ in ancient days, 
When learning, virtue, piety and truth 

' colleges in EDglish universities, or, as in Oxford, organizations differing from 
colleges chiefly in being without endowment 



140 WILLIAM OOWPER 

Were precious and inculcated with care, 

There dwelt a sage call'd Discipline. His head 

Not yet by time completely silver'd o'er, 

Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth, 

But strong for service still, and unimpair'd. 

His eye was meek and gentle, and a smile 

Play'd on his lips, and in his speech was heard 

Paternal sweetness, dignity and love. 

The occupation dearest to his heart 

Was to encourage goodness. He would stroke 

The head of modest and ingenuous worth, 

That blush'd at his own praise ; and press the youth 

Close to his side that pleased him. Learning grew, 

Beneath his care, a thriving vigorous plant ; 

The mind was well-inform'd, the passions held 

Subordinate, and diligence was choice. 

If e'er it chanced, as sometimes chance it must, 

That one among so many overleap'd 

The limits of control, his gentle eye 

Grew stern, and darted a severe rebuke ; 

His frown was full of terror, and his voice 

Shook the delinquent with such fits of awe 

As left him not till penitence had won 

Lost favor back again, and closed the breach. 

But Discipline, a faithful servant long, 

Declined at length into the vale of j^ears ; 

A palsy struck his arm ; his sparkling eye 

Was quench'd in rheums of age, his voice, unstrung, 

Grew tremulous, and moved derision more 

Than reverence, in perverse rebellious youth. 



So colleges and halls neglected much 
Their good old friend, and Discipline, at length, 
O'erlook'd and unemploy'd, fell sick and died. 
Then study languish'd, emulation slept, 



TEE SAGE CALLED " DISCIPLINE » 141 

And virtue fled. The schools became a scene 
Of solemn farce, where ignorance in stilts, 
His cap well lined with logic not his own. 
With parrot-tongue perform'd the scholar's part, 
Proceeding soon a graduated dunce. 
Then compromise had place, and scrutiny- 
Became stone-blind, precedence went in truck, 
And he was competent whose purse was so. 
A dissolution of all bonds ensued ; 
The curbs invented for the mulish mouth 
Of headstrong youth were broken ; bars and bolts 
Grew rusty by disuse, and massy gates 
Forgot their office, opening with a touch ; 
Till gowns at length were found mere masquerade; 
The tassell'd cap and the spruce band a jest, 
A mockery of the world. What need of these 
For gamesters, jockeys, brothellers impure. 
Spendthrifts and booted sportsmen, oftener seen 
With belted waist and pointers at their heels, 
Than in the bounds of duty ? What was learn'd, 
If aught was learn'd in childhood, is forgot, 
And such expense as pinches parents blue, 
And mortifies the liberal hand of love, 
Is squander'd in pursuit of idle sports 
And vicious pleasures ; buys the boy a name 
That sits a stigma on his father's house. 
And cleaves through life inseparably close 
To him that wears it. What can after-games 
Of riper joys, and commerce with the world. 
The lewd vain world that must receive him soon, 
Add to such erudition thus acquired 
Where science and where virtue are profess'd ? 
They may confirm his habits, rivet fast 
His folly, but to spoil him is a task 
That bids defiance to the united powers 
Of fashion, dissipation, taverns, stews. 



142 WILLIAM COWPER 

Now blame we most the nurselings or the nurse ? 
The children crook'd and twisted and deform'd 
Through want of care, or her whose winking eye 
And slumbering oscitancy mars the brood ? 
The nurse, no doubt. Regardless of her charge, 
She needs herself correction ; needs to learn 
That it is dangerous sporting with the world, 
With things so sacred as a nation's trust, 
The nurture of her youth, her dearest pledge. 

All are not such. I had a brother, once, — 

Peace to the memory of a man of worth, 

A man of letters, and of manners, too ; 

Of manners sweet as virtue always wears, 

When gay good-nature dresses her in smiles. 

He graced a college in which order yet 

Was sacred, and was honor'd, loved and wej^t 

By more than one, themselves conspicuous there. 

Some minds are tem^^er'd happily and mixed 

With such ingredients of good sense and taste 

Of what is excellent in man, they thirst 

With such a zeal to be what they approve, 

That no restraints can circumscribe them more 

Than they themselves by choice, for wisdom's sake. 

Nor can example hurt them, what they see 

Of vice in others but enhancing more 

The charms of virtue in their just esteem. 

If such escape contagion, and emerge 

Pure from so foul a pool, to shine abroad, 

And give the world their talents and themselves. 

Small thanks to those whose negligence or sloth 

Exposed their inexperience to the snare, 

And left them to an undirected choice. 



JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

1749-1 832 

JoHANN Wolfgang von Goethe, whose name is the greatest in 
German literature, was horn at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1749. His 
father was an imperial councilor, a man of cultivated tastes and ample 
wealth. Goethe passed his youth in the ancient free city of his hirth, 
and at the age of sixteen entered college at Leipsic. In 1770 he went 
to the university at Strashurg, from which, a year later, he received 
the degree of Doctor of JurisjDrudence. In 1775, already a famous 
author, he was invited hy Charles Augustus, Grand Duke of Saxe- 
Weimar, to the court at Weimar, and appoint-ed privy councilor of 
legation. Here he lived and died. 

Goethe's writings covered so wide a range of letters, and his long 
life was so full of masterly woi'k, that it is practicable to mention 
within the limits of a brief sketch the names of only a few of his great- 
est productions. Goethe's first noted work was " Gotz von Berlich- 
ingen," which appeared in 1773. " The Sorrows of Werther " followed 
in 1774. His first important work issued from Weimar was the drama 
"Iphigenia at Tauris." " Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship" and 
"Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre " are nondescript and deeply sig- 
nificant pi'oductions, generally classed as I'omances. "Truth and 
Poetiy " is a sort of rambling autobiography. Goethe's greatest work 
is " Faust," a drama of wonderful power and deep insight into human 
nature. Goethe has been called the sad Shakespeare of the later world. 
One is amazed at the universality of his genius. He died in 1832, at 
the height of his fame. 

"A beautiful death," says Thomas Carlyle, " like that of a soldier 
found faithful at his post, and in the cold hand his arms still grasped ! 
The poet's last w^ords are a greeting of the new-awakened earth* his 
last movement is to work at his appointed task. Beautiful ; what we 
might call a classic, sacred death, if it were not rather an Elijah- 
translation — in a chariot, not of fire and terror, but of hope and soft 
vernal sunbeams ! . . . The unwearied workman now rests from 
his labors ; the fruit of these is left growing and to grow. His earthly 
years have been numbered, and are ended ; but of his activity (for it 
stood rooted in the eternal) there is no end. All that we mean by the 

143 



144 JOEANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

higher literature of Germany, wliich is the higher literature of Europe, 
already gathers round this man as its creator ; of which grand object, 
dawning mysteriously on a world that hoped not for it, who is there 
that can measure the significance and far-reaching influences?" 

Characterization 

The story of " Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre" is almost devoid of 
connected plot, and is used rather as a vehicle for a number of detached 
dissertations and apologues than as a presentation of character or an 
illustration of life. For this reason it has been made the subject of 
adverse criticism, and many of the independent sections have been 
valued less highly than would have been the case if they had been 
offered to the reader in a more artistic setting and more intelligible 
association. But the too evident want of coherence in the whole, and 
the defects for which the author more than once apologizes, do not 
deprive its contents of all value. The book has been severely criticised 
by Mr. G. H. Lewes, w^ho speaks of its composition as "feeble" and 
"careless," and cites a passage from Eckermann showing that the 
second edition was purposely made the receptacle of various odds and 
ends which very possibly would otherwise have remained unprinted. 
But even ia the sif tings of Goethe's work many grains of gold may 
be found; and, apart from the separate interest of some of the detached 
pieces, there is sufficient purpose evident in the whole to give it a con- 
crete value. The main design is apparently the promulgation of a 
system of education and social life, as set forth in the sections relating 
to the Pedagogic Province. Unpractical as this system may seem, it 
is not more so than plans which have been gravely propounded and 
set afoot in our own day, and it is safe to predict that in generations 
to come there will be found educational reformers who may read with 
profit the description of Goethe's Pedagogic Utopia. 

Edward Bell. 

Selections from "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre'" 

(^^xtract from a letter from Wilhelm Meister to Natalia, his 
wife, concerning his son Felix.) " I have to pass over many- 
beautiful features of the common life of these virtuous and 

' This word is commonly translated Travels, but has in reality no equivalent 
in English. It denotes the period in which, by law or custom, a German artisan 
is required to sojourn in different places to perfect himself in his craft, after the 
completion of his apprenticeship. 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHME 145 

happy people; for how could everything be written? A few 
days I have spent pleasantly, but the third already warns me 
to bethink me of my further travels. 

"To-day I had a little dispute with Felix, for he wanted 
almost to compel me to transgress one of the good intentions 
which I have promised you to keep. Now it is just a defect, a 
misfortune, a fatality with me, that, before I am aware of it, 
the company increases around me, and I charge myself with a 
fresh burden, under which I afterwards have to toil and to drag 
myself along. Now, during my travels, we must have no third 
person as a constant companion. We wish and intend to be 
and to remain two only, and it has but just now seemed as if 
a new, and not exactly pleasing, connection was likely to be 
formed. 

" A poor, merry little youngster had joined the children of 
the house, with whom Felix had been enjoying these days in 
play, who allowed himself to be used or abused just as the game 
required, and who very soon won the favor of Felix. From 
various expressions I noticed already that the latter' had chosen 
a playmate for the next journey. The boy is known here in 
the neighborhood ; he is tolerated everywhere on account of 
his merriness, and occasionally receives gratuities. But he did 
not please me, and I begged the master of the house to send 
him away. This was accordingly done, but Felix was vexed 
about it, and there was a little scene. 

" On this occasion I made a discovery which pleased me. In 
a corner of the chapel, or hall, there stood a box of stones, 
which Felix — who since our wandering through the mountain 
had become exceedingly fond of stones — eagerly pulled out and 
examined. Among them were some fine, striking specimens. 
Our host said that the child might pick out for himself any he 
liked ; that these stones were what remained over from a large 
quantity which a stranger had sent from here a short time 
before. He called him Montan,^ and you can fancy how glad 

' This is a name supposed to be assumed by Jarno. See " Wilhelm Meister's 
Apprenticeship." 
s. M.— 10 



146 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

I was to hear this name, under which one of our best friends, 
to whom we owe so much, is travelling. As I inquired as to 
time and circumstances, I may hope soon to meet with him in 
my travels." 

The news that Montan was in the neighborhood had made 
Wilhelm thoughtful. He considered that it ought not to be 
left merely to chance whether he should see such a worthy 
friend again, and therefore he inquired of his host whether it 
was not known in what direction this traveller had bent his 
way. No one had any more exact knowledge of this, and 
Wilhelm had already determined to pursue his route accord- 
ing to the first plan, when Felix exclaimed, " If father were 
not so obstinate, we should soon find Montan." 

" In what manner ? " asked Wilhelm. 

Felix answered : " Little Fitz said j^esterday that he would 
most likely follow up the gentleman who had the pretty stones 
with him, and knew so much about them too." 

After some discussion Wilhelm at last resolved to make the 
attempt, and in so doing to give all the more attention to the 
suspicious boy. He was soon found, and when he understood 
what was intended, he brought a mallet and iron, and a very 
powerful hammer, together with a bag, and, in this miner-like 
equipment, ran merrily in front. 

The road led sidewa3^s up the mountain again. The chil- 
dren ran leaping together from rock to rock, over stock and 
stone, and brook and stream, without following any direct path. 
Fitz, glancing now to his right and now to his left, pushed 
quickly ujDwards. As Wilhelm, and particularly the loaded 
carrier, could not follow so quickly, the boys retraced the road 
several times forwards and backwards, singing and whistling. 
The forms of certain strange trees aroused the attention of 
Felix, who, moreover, now made for the first time the acquaint- 
ance of the larches and stone-pines, and was attracted by the 
wonderful gentians. And thus the difficult travelling from 
place to place did not lack entertainment. 



WILEELM MEI8 TEH'S WANDERJAHBE 147 

Little Fitz suddenly stood still and listened. He beckoned 
to the others to come. 

" Do you hear the knocking ? " said he. " It is the sound of 
a hammer striking the rock." 

" We hear it," said the others. 

" It is Montan," said he, " or some one who can give us news 
of him." 

As they followed the sound, which was repeated at intervals, 
they struck a clearing in the forest, and beheld a steep, lofty, 
naked rock, towering above everything, leaving even the tall 
forests deep under it. On the summit they descried a person. 
He stood at too great a distance to be recognized. The children 
at once commenced to clamber up the rugged paths. Wilhelm 
followed with some difficulty, nay, danger ; for in ascending a 
rock, the first one goes more safely, because he feels his way for 
himself; the one that follows only sees where the former has 
got to, but not how. The boys soon reached the top, and Wil- 
helm heard a loud shout of joy. 

" It is Jarno ! " Felix called out to his father, and Jarno at 
once stepped forward to a steep place, reached his hand to his 
friend, and pulled him up to the top. They embraced and wel- 
comed each other with rapture under the open canopy of heaven. 

The two friends, not without care and difficulty, had de- 
scended to join the children, who had settled themselves in a 
shady spot below. The mineral specimens collected by Montan 
and Felix were unpacked almost more eagerly than the pro- 
visions. The latter had many questions to ask, and the former 
many names to pronounce. Felix was delighted that he could 
tell him the names of them all, and committed them quickly 
to memory. At last he produced one more stone, and said, 
" What is this one called ? " 

Montan examined it with astonishment, and said, " Where 
did you get it ? " 

Fitz answered quickly, " I found it ; it comes from this 
country." 



148 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

" It is not from this district," replied Montan. 

Felix enjoyed seeing the great man somewhat perplexed. 

" You shall have a ducat," said Montan, " if you take me to 
the place where it is found." 

" It will be easy to earn," replied Fitz, " but not at once." 

" Then describe to me the place exactly, so that I shall be 
able to find it without fail. But that is impossible, for it is a 
cross-stone, which comes from St. James of Compostella, and 
which some foreigner has lost, if indeed you have not stolen it 
from him, because it looks so wonderful." 

" Give your ducat to your friend to take care of," said Fitz, 
" and I will honestly confess where I got the stone. In the 
ruined church at St. Joseph's there is a ruined altar as well. 
Among the scattered and broken stones at the top I discovered 
a layer of this stone, which served as a bed for the others, and 
I knocked down as much of it as I could get hold of. If you 
only lifted away the upper stones, no doubt you would find a 
good deal more of it." 

" Take your gold piece," replied Montan ; " you deserve it for 
this discovery. It is a pretty one. One justly rejoices when 
inanimate nature brings to light a semblance of what we love 
and venerate. She appears to us in the form of a sibyl, who 
sets down beforehand evidence of what has been predestined 
from eternity, but can only in the course of time become a real- 
ity. Upon this, as upon a miraculous, holy foundation, the 
priests had set their altar." 

Wilhelm, who had been listening for a time, and who had 
noticed that many names and many descriptions came over and 
over again, repeated his already expressed wish that Montan 
would tell him so much as he had need of for the elementary 
instruction of the boy. 

" Give that up," replied Montan. " There is nothing more 
terrible than a teacher who does not know more than the 
scholars at all events ought to know. He who wants to teach 
others may often indeed be silent about the best that he knows, 
but he must not be half instructed himself." 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDEBJAHBE 149 

"But where, then, are such perfect teachers to be found?" 

" You can find them very easily," replied Montan. 

" Where then ? " said Wilhelm, with some incredulity. 

" Wherever the matter which you want to master is at home," 
replied Montan. " The best instruction is derived from the 
most complete environment. Do you not learn foreign lan- 
guages best in the countries where they are at home — where 
only those given ones and no others strike your ear ? " 

" And have you then," asked Wilhelm, " attained the knowl- 
edge of mountains in the midst of mountains ? " 

" Of course." 

" Without conversing with people ? " asked Wilhelm. 

" At least only with people," replied the other, " who were 
familiar with mountains. Wheresoever the Pygmies, attracted 
by the metalliferous veins, bore their way through the rock 
to make the interior of the earth accessible, and by every 
means try to solve problems of the greatest difficulty, there is 
the place where the thinker eager for knowledge ought to take 
up his station. He sees business, action ; lets things follow their 
own course, and is glad at success and failure. What is useful 
is only a part of what is significant. To possess a subject com- 
pletely, to master it, one has to study the thing for its own sake. 
But whilst I am speaking of the highest and the last, to which 
we raise ourselves only late in the day by dint of frequent and 
fruitful observation, I see the boys before me ; to them matters 
sound quite differently. The child might easily grasp every 
species of activity, because everything looks easy that is excel- 
lently performed. Every beginning is difficult ! That may be 
true in a certain sense; but more generally one can say that the 
beginning of everything is easy, and the last stages are ascended 
with most difficulty and most rarely." 

Wilhelm, who in the meantime had been thinking, said to 
Montan, " Have you really adopted the persuasion that the col- 
lective forms of activity have to be separated in precept as well 
as in practice ? " 

" I know no other or better plan," replied the former. " What- 



150 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON OOETHE 

ever man would achieve, must loose itself from him like a 
second self; and how could that be possible if his first self were 
not entirely penetrated therewith ? " 

" But yet a many-sided culture has been held to be advan- 
tageous and necessary." 

" It may be so, too, in its proper time," answered the other. 
" Many-sidedness prepares, in point of fact, only the element in 
which the one-sided man can work, who just at this time has 
room enough given him. Yes, now is the time for the one- 
sided ; well for him who comprehends it, and who works for 
himself and others in this mind. In certain things it is under- 
stood thoroughly and at once. Practice till you are an able 
violinist, and be assured that the director will have pleasure in 
assigning you a place in the orchestra. Make an instrument of 
yourself, and wait and see what sort of place humanity will 
kindly grant you in universal life. Let us break off. Whoso 
will not believe, let him follow his own path ; he too will suc- 
ceed sometimes; but I say it is needful everywhere to serve 
from the ranks upwards. To limit oneself to a handicraft is 
the best. For the narrowest heads it is always a craft ; for the 
better ones an art ; and the best, when he does one thing, does 
everything — or, to be less paradoxical, in the one thing, which 
he does rightly, he beholds the semblance of everything that is 
rightly done." 

This conversation, which we only reproduce sketchily, lasted 
until sunset, which, glorious as it was, yet led the company to 
consider where they would spend the night. 

" I should not know how to bring you under cover," said 
Fitz ; " but if you care to sit or lie down for the night in a warm 
place at a good old charcoal-burner's, you will be welcome." 

And so they all followed him through strange paths to a 
quiet spot, where any one would soon have felt at home. 

In the midst of a narrow clearing in the forest there lay 
smoking and full of heat the round-roofed charcoal kilns, on one 
side the hut of pine boughs, and a bright fire close by. They 
sat down and made themselves comfortable; the children at 



WILEELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHRE 151 

once busy helping the charcoal-burner's wife, who, with hos- 
pitable anxiety, was getting ready some slices of bread, toasted 
with butter so as to let them be filled and soaked with it, which 
afforded deliciously oily morsels to their hungry appetites. 

Presently, whilst the boys were playing at hide-and-seek 
among the dimly lighted pine stems, howling like wolves and 
barking like dogs, in such a way that even a courageous way- 
farer might well have been frightened by it, the friends talked 
confidentially about their circumstances. 

But now, to the peculiar duties of the Renunciants apper- 
tained also this, that on meeting they must speak neither about 
the past nor the future, but only occupy themselves with the 
present. 

Jarno, who had his mind full of mining undertakings, and of 
all the knowledge and capabilities that they required, enthusi- 
astically explained to Wilhelm, with the utmost exactitude and 
thoroughness, all that he promised himself in both hemispheres 
from such knowledge and capacities; of which, however, his 
friend, who always sought for the true treasure in the human 
heart alone, could hardly form any idea, but rather answered 
at last with a laugh : 

" Thus you stand in contradiction with yourself, when begin- 
ning only in advanced years to meddle with what one ought to 
be instructed in from youth up." 

" Not at all," replied the other, " for it is precisely this, that I 
was educated in my childhood at a kind uncle's, a mining 
officer of consequence, that I grew up with the miners' chil- 
dren, and with them used to swim little bark boats down the 
draining channel of the mine, that has led me back into this 
circle wherein I now feel myself again happy and contented. 
This charcoal smoke can hardly agree with you as with me, 
who from childhood up have been accustomed to swallow it as 
incense. I have essayed a great deal in the world, and always 
found the same : in habit lies the only satisfaction of man ; even 
the unpleasant, to which we have accustomed ourselves, we miss 
with regret. I was once troubled a very long time with a 



152 JOEANN WOLFGANG YON GOETHE 

wound that would not heal, and when at last I recovered, it was 
most unpleasant to me when the surgeon remained away and 
no longer dressed it, and no longer took breakfast with me." 

" But I should like, however," replied Wilhelm, " to impart to 
my son a freer survey of the world than any limited handicraft 
can give. Circumscribe man as you will, for all that he will at 
last look about himself in his time, and how can he understand 
it all, if he does not in some degree know what has preceded 
him ? And would he not enter every grocer's shop with aston- 
ishment if he had no idea of the countries whence these indis- 
pensable rarities have come to him ? " 

" What does it matter ? " replied Jarno ; " let him read the 
newspapers like every Philistine, and drink coffee like every old 
woman. But still, if you cannot leave it alone, and are so bent 
upon perfect culture, I do not understand how you can be so 
blind, how you need search any longer, how you fail to see 
that you are in the immediate neighborhood of an excellent 
educational institution." 

" In the neighborhood ? " said Wilhelm, shaking his head. 

'' Certainly ! " rej)lied the other ; '' what do you see here? " 

"Where?" 

" Here, just before your nose ! " Jarno stretched out his fore- 
finger, and exclaimed impatiently : " What is that ? " 

" Well then," said Wilhelm, " a charcoal kiln ; but what has 
that to do with it ? " 

" Good, at last ! a charcoal kiln. How do they proceed to 
erect it?" 

" They place logs one on the top of the other." 

" When that is done, what happens next ? " 

" As it seems to me," said Wilhelm, " you want to pay me a 
compliment in Socratic fashion — to make me understand, to 
make me acknowledge, that I am extremely absurd and thick- 
headed." 

" Not at all," replied Jarno ; " continue, my friend, to answer 
to the point. So, what happens then, when the orderly pile of 
wood has been arranged solidly yet lightly ? " 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANBERJAHBE 153 

" Why, they set fire to it." 

" And when it is thoroughly alight, when the flame bursts 
forth from every crevice, what happens ? Do they let it burn 
on?" 

" Not at all. They cover up the flames, which keep breaking 
out again and again, with turf and earth, with coal dust, and 
anything else at hand." 

"To quench them?" 

" Not at all ; to damp them down." 

" And thus they leave it just as much air as is necessary, 
that all may be penetrated with the glow, so that all ferments 
aright. Then every crevice is shut, every outlet prevented ; so 
that the whole by degrees is extinguished in itself, carbonized, 
cooled down, finally taken out separately, as marketable ware, 
forwarded to farrier and locksmith, to baker and cook ; and 
when it has served sufficiently for the profit and edification of 
dear Christendom, is employed in the form of ashes by washer- 
women and soap-boilers." 

" Well," replied Wilhelm, laughing, " what have you in view 
in reference to this comparison? " 

" That is not difficult to say," replied Jarno. " I look upon 
myself as an old basket of excellent beech charcoal ; but in 
addition I allow myself the privilege of burning only for my 
own sake ; whence also I appear very strange to people." 

" And me," said Wilhelm ; " how will yoU treat me ? " 

" At the present moment," said Jarno, " I look on you as a 
pilgrim's staff, which has the wonderful property of sprouting 
in every corner in which it is put, but never taking root. Now 
draw out the comparison further for yourself, and learn to 
understand why neither forester nor gardener, neither charcoal- 
burner nor joiner, nor any other craftsman, knows how to make 
anything of you." 

Our pilgrims had performed the journey according to pro- 
gramme, and prosperously reached the frontier of the province 
in which they were to learn so many wonderful things. On 



154 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

their first entry they beheld a most fertile region, the gentle 
slopes of which were favorable to agriculture, its higher 
mountains to sheep feeding, and its broad valleys to the rearing 
of cattle. It was shortly before the harvest, and everything was 
in the greatest abundance ; still, what surprised them from the 
outset was, that they saw neither women nor men, but only boys 
and youths busy getting ready for a j^rosperous harvest, and 
even making friendly preparations for a joyous harvest home. 
They greeted now one, and now another, and inquired about 
the master, of whose whereabouts no one could give an account. 
The address of their letter was : To the Master or to the Three, and 
this too the boys could not explain ; however, they referred the 
inquirers to an overseer, who was just preparing to mount his 
horse. They explained their object ; Felix's frank bearing 
seemed to please him ; and so they rode together along the 
road. 

Wilhelm had soon observed that a great diversity prevailed 
in the cut and color of the clothing, which gave a peculiar 
aspect to the whole of the little community. He was just on the 
point of asking his companion about this, when another strange 
sight was displayed to him : all the children, howsoever they 
might be occupied, stopped their work, and turned, with peculiar 
yet various gestures, towards the party riding past ; and it was 
easy to infer that their object was the overseer. The youngest 
folded their arms crosswise on the breast, and looked cheerfully 
towards the sky ; the intermediate ones held their arms behind 
them, and looked smiling upon the ground ; the third sort stood 
erect and boldly ; with arms at the side, they turned the head to 
the right, and placed themselves in a row, instead of remaining 
alone, like the others, where they were first seen. 

Accordingly, when they halted and dismounted, just where 
several children had ranged themselves in various attitudes and 
were being inspected by the overseer, Wilhelm asked the mean- 
ing of these gestures. 

Felix interposed, and said cheerfully : " What position have I 
to take, then ? " 



WILHELM MEISTER'8 WANDERJAHBE 155 

" In any case," answered the intendant, " at first the arms 
across the breast, and looking seriously and gladly upward^ 
without turning your glance." He obeyed ; however he soon 
exclaimed : " This does not please me particularly ; I see nothing 
overhead ; does it last long ? But yes, indeed," he exclaimed 
joyfully, " I see two hawks flying from west to east ; that must 
be a good omen ! " 

" It depends on how you take to it, how you behave your- 
self," rejoined the former ; " now go and mingle with them, just 
as they mingle with each other." 

He made a sign, the children forsook their attitudes, resumed 
their occupations or went on playing as before. 

" Will you, and can you," Wilhelm now asked, " explain to 
me that which causes my wonder ? I suppose that these gestures, 
these positions, are greetings, with which they welcome you." 

" Just so," answered the other ; " greetings, that tell me at 
once at what stage of cultivation each of these boys stands." 

" But could you," Wilhelm added, " explain to me the mean- 
ing of the graduation ? For that it is such, is easy to see." 

" That is the part of better people than me," answered the 
other ; " but I can assure you of this much, that they are no 
empty grimaces, and that, on the contrary, we impart to the 
children, not indeed the highest, but still a guiding and intelli- 
gible explanation ; but at the same time we command each to 
keep and cherish for himself what we may have chosen to 
impart for the information of each : they may not chat about it 
with strangers, nor amongst themselves, and thus the teaching is 
modified in a hundred ways. Besides this the secrecy has very 
great advantages ; for if we tell people immediately and perpet- 
ually the reason of everything, they think that there is nothing 
behind. To certain secrets, even if they may be known, we 
have to show deference by concealment and silence, for this 
tends to modesty and good morals." 

" I understand you," said Wilhelm. " Why should we not 
also apply spiritually what is so necessary in bodily matters ? 
But perhaps in another respect you can satisfy my curiosity. I 



156 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

am surprised at the great variety in the cut and color of their 
clothes, and yet I do not see all kinds of color, but a few only, 
and these in all their shades, from the brightest to the darkest. 
Still I observe, that in this there cannot be meant any indica- 
tion of degrees of either age or merit ; since the smallest and 
biggest boys mingled together, may be alike in cut and color, 
whilst those who are alike in gestures do not agree with one 
another in dress." 

" As concerns this, too," their companion rej)lied, " I cannot 
explain any further; yet I shall be much mistaken if you 
depart hence without being enlightened about all that you may 
wish to know." 

They were now going in search of the master, whom they 
thought that they had found ; but now a stranger could not but 
be struck by the fact, that the deeper they got into the country, 
the more they were met by a harmonious sound of singing. 
Whatsoever the boys set about, in whatever work they were 
found engaged, they were for ever singing, and in fact it seemed 
that the songs were specially adapted to each particular occupa- 
tion, and in similar cases always the same. If several children 
were in any place, they would accompany each other in turns. 
Towards evening they came upon some dancing, their steps 
being animated and guided by choruses. Felix from his horse 
chimed in with his voice, and, in truth, not badly ; Wilhelm was 
delighted with this entertainment, which made the neighbor- 
hood so lively. " I suppose," he observed to his companion, 
" you devote a great deal of care to this kind of instruction, for 
otherwise this ability would not be so widely diffused, or so 
perfectly developed." 

" Just so," replied the other: " with us the art of singing forms 
the first step in education ; everything else is subservient to it, 
and attained by means of it. With us the simplest enjoyment, 
as well as the simplest instruction, is enlivened and impressed 
by singing ; and even what we teach in matters of religion and 
morals is communicated by the method of song. Other advan- 
tages for independent ends are directly allied ; for, whilst we 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHRE 157 

practice the children in writing down by symbols on the slate 
the notes which they produce, and then, according to the indi- 
cation of these signs^ in reproducing them in their throats, and 
moreover in adding the text, they exercise at the same time the 
hand, ear, and eye, and attain orthography and calligraphy 
quicker than you would believe; and, finally, since all this 
must be practiced and copied according to pure meter and 
accurately fixed time, they learn to understand much sooner 
than in other ways the high value of measure and computation. 
On this account, of all imaginable means, we have chosen music 
as the first element of our education, for from this, equally easy 
roads radiate in every direction." 

Wilhelm sought to inform himself further, and did not hide 
his astonishment at hearing no instrumental music. 

" We do not neglect it," replied the other, " but we practice it 
in a special place, inclosed in the most charming mountain 
valley; and then again we take care that the different instru- 
ments are taught in places lying far apart. Especially are the 
discordant notes of beginners banished to certain solitary 
spots, where they can drive no one crazy ; for you will yourself 
confess, that in well-regulated civil society scarcely any more 
miserable nuisance is to be endured than when the neighbor- 
hood inflicts upon us a beginner on the flute or on the violin. 
Our beginners, from their own laudable notion of wishing to be 
an annoyance to none, go voluntarily for a longer or shorter 
period into the wilds, and, isolated there, vie with one another 
in attaining the merit of being allowed to draw nearer to the 
inhabited world ; on which account they are, from time to time, 
allowed to make an attempt at drawing nearer, which seldom 
fails, because in these, as in our other modes of education, we 
venture actually to develop and encourage a sense of shame 
and diffidence. I am sincerely glad that your son has got a 
good voice; the rest will be effected all the more easily." 

They had now reached a place where Felix was to remain, and 
make trial of his surroundings, until they were disposed to grant 
a formal admission. They already heard from afar a cheerful 



158 JOEANN WOLFaANG VON &OBTSE 

singing ; it was a game, which the boys were now enjoying in 
their play hour. A general chorus resounded, in which each 
member of a large circle joined heartily, clearly, and vigorously 
in his part, obeying the directions of the superintendent. The 
latter, however, often took the singers by surprise, by suspending 
with a signal the chorus singing, and bidding some one or other 
single performer, by a touch of his baton, to adapt alone some 
suitable song to the expiring tune and the passing idea. Most 
of them already showed considerable ability ; a few who failed 
in the performance willingly paid their forfeit, without exactly 
being made a laughing-stock. Felix was still child enough to 
mix at once among them, and came tolerably well out of the 
trial. Thereupon the first style of greeting was conceded to him : 
he forthwith folded his arms on his breast, looked upwards, and 
with such a droll expression withal, that it was quite jDlain that 
no hidden meaning in it had as yet occurred to him. 

The pleasant spot, the kind reception, the merry games, all 
pleased the boy so well, that he did not feel particularly sad 
when he saw his father depart ; he looked almost more wist- 
fully at the horse as it was led away; yet he had no difficulty 
in understanding, when he was informed that he could not 
keep it in the present locality. On the other hand, they prom- 
ised him that he should find, if not the same, at all events an 
equally lively and well-trained one when he did not expect it. 

As the Superior could not be found, the overseer said : " I 
must now leave you, to pursue my own avocations ; but still 
I will take you to the Three, who preside over holy things : 
your letter is also addressed to them, and together they stand 
in place of the Superior." 

Wilhelm would have liked to learn beforehand about the holy 
things, but the other replied : " The Three in return for the 
confidence with which you have left your son with us, will 
certainly, in accordance with wisdom and justice, reveal to you 
all that is most necessary. The visible objects of veneration, 
which I have called holy things, are included within a par- 
ticular boundary, are not mingled with anything, or disturbed 



WILEELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHBE 159 

by anything ; only at certain times of the year, the pupils, ac- 
cording to the stages of their education, are admitted to them, 
in order that they may be instructed historically and through 
their senses ; for in this way they carry off with them an im- 
pression, enough for them to feed upon for a long time in the 
exercise of their duty." 

Wilhelm now stood at the entrance of a forest valley, inclosed 
by loft}" walls ; on a given signal a small door was opened, and 
a serious, respectable-looking man received our friend. He 
found himself within a large and beautifully verdant inclosure, 
shaded with trees and bushes of every kind, so that he could 
scarcely see some stately walls and fine buildings through the 
dense and lofty natural growth ; his friendly reception by the 
Three, who came up by and by, ultimately concluded in a 
conversation, to which each contributed something of his own, 
but the substance of which we shall put together in brief. 

" Since you have intrusted your son to us," they said, " it is 
our duty to let you see more deeply into our methods of pro- 
ceeding. You have seen many external things, that do not 
carry their significance with them all at once ; which of these 
do you most wish to have explained ? " 

" I have remarked certain seemly yet strange gestures and 
obeisances, the significance of which I should like to learn; 
with you no doubt what is external has reference to what is 
within, and vice versa ; let me understand this relation." 

" Well-bred and healthy children possess a great deal ; Nature 
has given to each everything that he needs for time and con- 
tinuance : our duty is to develop this ; often it is better de- 
veloped by itself. But one thing no one brings into the world, 
and yet it is that upon which depends everything through 
which a man becomes a man on every side. If you can find 
it out yourself, speak out." 

Wilhelm bethought himself for a short time, and then shook 
his head. After a suitable pause, they exclaimed: "Venera- 
tion ! " 

Wilhelm was startled. 



160 JOHANN WOLFGAJYG VON GOETHE 

*' Veneration," they repeated. " It is wanting in all, and per- 
haps in yourself. You have seen three kinds of gestures, and 
we teach a threefold veneration, which when combined to form 
a whole, only then attains to its highest power and effect. The 
first is veneration for that which is above us. That gesture, 
the arms folded on the breast, a cheerful glance towards the 
sky, that is precisely what we prescribe to our untutored chil- 
dren, at the same time requiring witness of them that there is 
a God up above, who reflects and reveals Himself in our parents, 
tutors, and superiors. The second, veneration for that which is 
below us. The hands folded on the back as if tied together, 
the lowered, smiling glance, bespeak that we have to regard 
the earth well and cheerfully ; it gives us an opportunity to 
maintain ourselves ; it affords unspeakable joys ; but it brings 
disproportionate sufferings. If one hurts oneself bodily, whether 
faultily or innocently ; if others hurt one, intentionally or acci- 
dentally; if earthly chance does one any harm, let that be well 
thought of, for such danger accompanies us all our life long. 
But from this condition we deliver our pupil as soon as pos- 
sible, directly we are convinced that the teachings of this stage 
have made a sufficient impression upon him ; but then we bid 
him be a man, look to his companions, and guide himself with 
reference to them. Now he stands erect and bold, yet not self- 
ishly isolated ; only in a union with his equals does he present 
a front towards the world. We are unable to add anything 
further." 

" I see it all," replied Wilhelm ; " it is probably on this ac- 
count that the multitude is so inured to vice, because it only 
takes pleasure in the element of ill-will and evil speech ; he who 
indulges in this soon becomes indifferent to God, contemptuous 
towards the world, and a hater of his fellows; but the true, 
genuine, indispensable feeling of self-respect is ruined in conceit 
and presumption." 

" Allow me, nevertheless," Wilhelm went on, " to make one 
objection : has it not ever been held that the fear evinced by 
savage nations in the presence of mighty natural phenomena, 



WIL3ELM MET8TER 'S WANDERJAHRE I6l 

and other inexplicable foreboding events, is the germ from 
which a higher feeling, a purer disposition, should gradually be 
developed ? " 

• To this the others replied : " Fear, no doubt, is consonant with 
nature, but not reverence ; people fear a known or unknown 
jiowerful being: the strong one tries to grapple with it, the 
weak to avoid it ; both wish to get rid of it, and feel happy 
when in a short space they have conquered it, when their 
nature in some measure has regained its freedom and indepen- 
dence. The natural man repeats this operation a million times 
during his life ; from fear he strives after liberty, from liberty 
he is driven back into fear, and does not advance one step 
further. To fear is easy, but unpleasant ; to entertain reverence 
is difficult, but pleasing. Man determines himself unwillingly to 
reverence, or rather never determines himself to it ; it is a loftier 
sense which must be imparted to his nature, and which is self- 
developed only in the most exceptionally gifted ones, whom 
therefore from all time we have regarded as saints, as gods. 
In this consists the dignity, in this the function of all genuine 
religions, of which also there exist only three, according to the 
objects towards which they direct their worship." 

The men paused, Wilhelm remained silent for a while in 
thought ; as he did not feel himself equal to pointing these 
strange words, he begged the worthy men to continue their 
remarks, which too they at once consented to do. 

" No religion," they said, " which is based on fear is esteemed 
among us. With the reverence which a man allows himself 
to entertain, whilst he accords honor, he rnay preserve his own 
honor ; he is not at discord with himself, as in the other case. 
The religion which rests on reverence for that which is above 
us we call the ethnical one ; it is the religion of nations, and 
the first happy redemption from a base fear; all so-called 
heathen religions are of this kind, let them have what names 
they will. The second religion, which is founded on that rever- 
ence which we have for what is like ourselves, we call the phil- 
osophic ; for the philosopher, who places himself in the middle, 

3. M 11 



162 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

must draw downward to himself all that is higher, and upward 
to himself all that is lower, and only in this central position 
does he deserve the name of the sage. Now, whilst he pene- 
trates his relations to his fellows, and therefore to the whole of 
humanity, and his relations to all other earthly surroundings, 
necessary or accidental, in the cosmical sense he only lives in 
the truth. But we must now speak of the third religion, based 
on reverence for that which is below us ; we call it the Christian 
one, because this disposition of mind is chiefly revealed in it ; 
it is the last one which humanity could and was bound to 
attain. Yet what was not demanded for it ? not merel}^ to leave 
earth below, and claim a higher origin, but to recognize as 
divine even humility and poverty, scorn and contempt, shame 
and misery, suffering and death ; nay, to revere and make lov- 
able even sin and crime, not as hindrances but as furtherances 
of holiness ! Of this there are indeed found traces throughout 
all time ; but a track is not a goal, and this having once been 
reached, humanity cannot turn backwards; and it may be 
maintained that the Christian religion, having once appeared, 
can never disappear again ; having once been divinely em- 
bodied, cannot again be dissolved." 

" Which of these religions do you then profess more particu- 
larly ? " said Wilhelm. 

" All three," answered the others, " for, in jDoint of fact, they 
together present the true religion ; from these three reverences 
outsprings the highest reverence, reverence for oneself, and the 
former again develojD themselves from the latter, so that man 
attains to the highest he is capable of reaching, in order that 
he may consider himself the best that God and nature have 
jDroduced ; nay, that he may be able to remain on this height 
without being drawn through conceit or egoism into what is 
base." 

" Such a profession of faith, developed in such a manner, 
does not estrange me," replied Wilhelm ; " it agrees with all 
that one learns here and there in life, only that the very thing 
unites j^ou that severs the others." 



WILEELM MEISTER'S WANDERJASRE 163 

To this the others replied : " This confession is already adhered 
to by a large part of the world, though unconsciously." 

" How so, and where ? " asked Wilhelm. 

" In the Creed ! " exclaimed the others, loudly ; " for the first 
article is ethnical, and belongs to all nations : the second is 
Christian, for those struggling against sufferings and glorified 
in sufferings ; the third finally teaches a spiritual communion 
of saints, to wit, of those in the highest degree good and wise : 
ought not therefore in fairness the three divine Persons, under 
whose likeness and name such convictions and promises are 
uttered, to pass also for the highest Unity ? " 

" I thank you," replied the other, " for having so clearly and 
coherently explained this to me — to whom, as a full-grown man, 
the three dispositions of mind are not new ; and when I recall 
that 3^ou teach the children these high truths, first through 
material symbols, then through a certain symbolic analogy, 
and finally develop in them the highest interpretation, I must 
needs highly approve of it." 

" Exactly so," replied the former ; " but now you must still 
learn something more, in order that you may be convinced that 
your son is in the best hands. However, let this matter rest 
for the morning hours ; rest and refresh yourself, so that, con- 
tented and humanly complete, you may accompany us farther 
into the interior to-morrow." 

Led by the hand of the eldest, our friend now entered through 
a handsome portal into a room, or rather, eight-sided hall, which 
was so richly adorned with pictures, that it caused astonish- 
ment to the visitor. He easily understood that all that he saw 
must have an important meaning, though he himself was not 
at once able to guess it. He was just on the point of asking his 
conductor about it, when the latter invited him to enter a side 
gallery, which, open on one side, surrounded a spacious, richly 
planted flower-garden. The wall, however, attracted the eye 
more than this brilliant adornment of nature, for it was painted 
throughout its whole length, and the visitor could not walk far 



164 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

along it without remarking that the sacred books of the Israel- 
ites had furnished the subjects of these pictures. 

"It is here," said the eldest, "that we teach that religion 
which, for the sake of brevity, I have called the ethnical. Its 
internal substance is found in the history of the world, as its 
external envelope in the events themselves. In the reoccur- 
rence of the destinies of entire nations it is, properly speaking, 
grasped." 

" You have, I see," said Wilhelm, " conferred the honor on 
the Israelitish people, and made its history the foundation of 
this exposition, or rather you have made it the principal sub- 
ject of the same." 

" Just as you see," rejoined the old man, " for you will observe 
that in the plinths and friezes are represented not so much 
synchronistic as symphronistic actions and events, whilst among 
all nations there occur traditions of similar and equal import. 
Thus, while in the principal field, Abraham is visited hj his 
gods in the form of handsome youths, you see up there in the 
frieze, Apollo among the shepherds of Admetus ; from which 
we may learn that when the gods appear to men, they mostly 
go about unrecognized among them." 

The two observers went farther. Wilhelm found for the most 
part well-known subjects, yet represented in a more lively and 
significant manner than he had been accustomed to see them 
before. In reference to a few matters he asked for some explana- 
tion, in doing which he could not refrain from inquiring again, 
why they had selected the Israelitish history before all others ? 

Hereupon the eldest answered : " Among all heathen relig- 
ions . . . this one has great advantages, of which I shall 
mention only a few. Before the ethnic tribunal, before the 
tribunal of the God of nations, it is not the question, whether 
it is the best or the most excellent nation, but only whether it 
still exists, whether it has maintained itself. The Israelitish 
nation has never been worth much, as its leaders, judges, rulers, 
and prophets have a thousand times thrown in its teeth; it 
possesses few virtues, and most of the faults of other nations ; 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHBE 165 

but in independence, endurance, courage, and if all that were 
no longer of account, in toughness, it cannot find its equal. It 
is the most tenacious people on the face of the earth ! It is, it 
has been, and will be to glorify the name of Jehovah through 
all time. We have, therefore, set it up as a pattern, as a mas- 
terpiece, to which the others only serve as a frame." 

" It is not becoming in me to argue with you," replied Wil- 
helm, " since you are in a position to teach me. Proceed, there- 
fore, to explain to me the other advantages of this nation, or 
rather of its history, of its religion." 

" One principal advantage," answered the other, " consists in 
the excellent collection of its sacred books. They are combined 
so happily, that from the most heterogeneous elements there 
results a deceptive unity. They are complete enough to satisfy, 
fragmentary enough to stimulate interest ; sufficiently barbaric 
to excite challenge, sufficiently tender to soothe ; and how many 
other opposing qualities might we extol in these books, in this 
Book!" 

The series of the principal pictures, as well as the connection 
of the smaller ones which accompanied them above and below, 
gave the guest so much to think of, that he scarcely listened to 
the explanatory remarks by which his companion seemed 
rather to divert his attention from, than to fix it on the sub- 
jects. 

In the meanwhile the other took occasion to say : " I must 
here mention one advantage of the Israelitish religion : that it 
does not embody its God in any given form, and therefore leaves 
us at liberty to give him a worthy human figure; also, on the 
other hand, to depict base idolatry by the forms of beasts and 
monsters." 

Our friend, moreover, in a short stroll through these halls, 
had again called to mind the history of the world : there was 
something new to him in regard to the circumstance. Thus, 
through the juxtaposition of the pictures, through the reflec- 
tions of his companion, fresh ideas had dawned upon his mind ; 
and he was glad that Felix by means of a visible representa- 



166 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

tion of such merit should appropriate to himself for his whole 
life long, as vividly as if they had actually happened in his 
own time, those grand, significant, and inimitable events. He 
looked at these pictures at last only with the eyes of the child, 
and in this aspect he felt perfectly satisfied with them. And 
so strolling on they reached those sad, confused periods, and 
finally the destruction of the city and the temple, the murder, 
banishment and slavery of whole multitudes of this obstinate 
nation. Its subsequent destinies were represented by discreet 
allegory, since a historic and real representation of them lies 
beyond the limits of the noble art. 

Here the gallery, through which they had walked, termi- 
nated abruptly, and Wilhelm wondered at finding himself 
already at the end. 

" I find," he said to his guide, " an omission in this historical 
walk. You have destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, and scat- 
tered the nation, without introducing the Divine Man, who 
shortly before that ver}'- time taught in it, and to whom, too, 
shortly before they would give no hearing." 

" To do this, as you demand, would have been a mistake. 
The life of that Divine Man, to whom you allude, stands in no 
connection with the world history of his time. His was a pri- 
vate life, his doctrine a doctrine for individuals. What pub- 
licly concerns the masses of the people and its members belongs 
to the history of the world, to the religion of the world, which 
we regard as the first. What inwardly concerns the individual 
belongs to the second religion, to the religion of the wise ; such 
was the one that Christ taught and practiced as long as he 
went about on earth. Wherefore the external ends here, and 
I now open to you the internal." 

A door opened, and they entered a similar gallery, where 
Wilhelm at once recognized the pictures of the second holy 
writings. They seemed to be by a different hand from the 
first ; everything was gentler, forms, movements, surroundings, 
light, and coloring. 

" You see here," said his companion, after they had walked 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHRE 167 

past a part of the pictures, "neither deeds nor events, but 
miracles and parables. Here is a new world ; a new exterior, 
different from the former, and an interior, which in that is 
entirely lacking. By miracles and parables a new world is 
opened. The former make the common extraordinary, the lat- 
ter make the extraordinary common." 

" Have the kindness," replied Wilhelm, " to explain me these 
few words more circumstantially, for I do not feel equal to doing 
it myself" 

" You possess a natural mind," replied the other, " although 
a deep one. Examples will open it most readily. Nothing is 
more common or ordinary than eating and drinking; on the 
other hand, it is extraordinary to ennoble a beverage, or to 
multiply a meal, so that it may suffice for a countless num- 
ber. Nothing is commoner than illness and bodily infirmity ; 
but to cure, to alleviate these by spiritual or spiritual-seeming 
means, is extraordinary : and just in this consists the marvel of 
the miracle — that the common and extraordinary, the possible 
and the impossible, become one. In the similitude, in the par- 
able, the reverse is the case ; here you have mind, insight, the 
idea of the sublime, the extraordinary, the unattainable. When 
this is embodied in a common, ordinary, intelligible image, so 
that it confronts us as living, present and real, so that we can 
appropriate, seize, retain, and converse with it as with one of 
our own like ; that indeed becomes a second species of miracle, 
which is fairly associated with the first kind, nay, perhaps, is to 
be preferred to it. Here the living doctrine itself is pronounced, 
the doctrine that arouses no dispute. It is no opinion as to 
what is right or wrong; it is indisputably right or wrong 
itself." 

This part of the gallery was shorter, or rather it was only the 
fourth part of the inclosure of the inner court-yard. But while 
one cared only to pass along the first, here one was glad to 
linger, here one liked to walk to and fro. The subjects were 
not so striking nor so manifold, but so much the more did they 
invite inquiry into their deep and quiet meaning; moreover 



168 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

the two wanderers turned at the end of the corridor, whilst 
Wilhelm expressed a fear that in fact only the last supper, the 
last parting of the Master from his disciples, was reached. He 
asked for the remaining part of the story. 

" In all teaching," replied the elder one, " in all tradition, we 
are very willing to set apart only what it is possible to set 
apart, for only thereby can the notion of what is significant be 
developed in youth. Life otherwise mingles and mixes every- 
thing together ; and thus we have here the life of that excellent 
Man completely separated from its end. During life he appears 
as a true philosopher — do not be scandalized at this expression 
— as a sage in the highest sense. He stands firmly to his point; 
he pursues his own path unflinchingly, and whilst he draws up 
to himself what is inferior, whilst he allows the ignorant, the 
poor, the sick, a share in his wisdom, wealth, and power, and 
thereby seems to step down to their level ; still, on the other 
hand, he does not deny his divine origin; he dares to make 
himself equal to God, nay, to declare himself God. In this 
manner, from his youth up, he astonishes those who surround 
him, gains one part of them over to himself, arouses the other 
against himself, and shows all those to whom it is a question 
of a certain sublimity in doctrine and life, what they will have 
to expect from the world. And thus his life's journey for the 
noble part of humanity is more instructive and fruitful than 
his death ; for to the one test every one is called, but to the 
other only a few. And in order that we may pass over all that 
follows from this, only look at the touching scene of the last 
supper ! Here the sage, as always happens, leaves his followers 
behind, quite orphaned, so to say, and whilst he is taking 
thought for the good ones, he is at the same time feeding with 
them a traitor, who will bring him and the better ones to de- 
struction." 

With these words the elder opened a door, and Wilhelm was 
astonished to find himself again in the first hall of entrance. 
In the meantime, they had made, as he could easily see, the 
entire circuit of the court-yard. 



WILHELM MEIS TEE'S WANDERJAHRE 169 

" I was Loping," said Wilhelm, " that j'-ou would conduct me 
to the end, whilst you are taking me back to the beginning." 

" This time I can show you nothing more," said the elder ; " we 
do not let our pupils see more, we do not explain to them more 
than what you have so far passed through ; the external and 
generally mundane may be imparted to each from his youth 
up ; the internal and specially spiritual and mental, only to 
those who are growing up to a certain degree of thoughtfulness ; 
and the rest, which can be disclosed onl}^ once a year, only to 
those of whom we are taking leave. That last form of religion, 
which arises from respect for what is below us, that reverence 
for what is repugnant, hateful, and aj^t to be shunned, we im- 
part to each only by way of outfit for the world, in order that 
he may know where he can find the like, if need of such should 
stir within him. I invite you to return after the lapse of a 
year to attend our general festival, and to see how far your son 
has progressed ; at which time too you shall be initiated into 
the holy estate of sorrow." 

Wilhelm lingered, looking over the pictures in the vestibule, 
wishing to have their meaning explained. 

"This too," said the elder, "we shall continue to owe you 
until the year is over. We do not admit any strangers to the 
instruction which we impart to the children during the inter- 
val ; but in due time come and listen to what our best speakers 
think fit to say publicly on these subjects." 

Soon after this conversation a knock was heard at the small 
door. The inspector of yesterday presented himself; he had 
led up AVilhelm's horse. And thus our friend took leave of the 
Three, who at parting recommended him to the inspector in 
the following terms: "He is now numbered among the con- 
fidants, and what you have to answer to his questions is known 
to you ; for he surely still wishes to be enlightened about many 
things that he has seen and heard with us ; the measure and 
purport are not unknown to you." Wilhelm had still in fact 
a few questions on his mind, which also he expressed forth- 



170 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

with. Wherever they rode by, the children ranged themselves 
as on the da}^ before ; but to-day he saw, although rarely, a bo}'- 
here and there who did not salute the inspector as he rode 
past, did not look up from his work, and allowed him to pass 
by without notice. Wilhelm now inquired the cause of this, 
and what this exception meant. 

The other replied thereto : " It is in fact exceedingly signifi- 
cant, for it is the severest punishment that we inflict upon our 
pupils ; they are declared unworthy of showing reverence, and 
compelled to seem rude and uncultured ; but they do all that 
is possible to rescue themselves from this position, and apply 
themselves as quickly as possible to every duty. Should, how- 
ever, any hardened youngster show no readiness to recant, then 
he is sent back to his parents with a short but conclusive report. 
He who does not learn to adapt himself to the laws must leave 
the region where they prevail." 

Another sight excited to-day as yesterday the curiosity of the 
traveller ; it was the variety of color and shape in the clothes 
of the pupils. In this there seemed to prevail no graduated 
arrangement, for some who saluted differently were dressed in 
uniform style, whilst those who had the same way of greeting 
were clad differently. Wilhelm asked for the cause of this 
seeming contradiction. 

" It is explained thus," replied the other ; " namely, that it is 
a means of finding out the peculiar disposition of each boy. 
With strictness and method in other things, in this respect we 
allow a certain degree of freedom to prevail. Within the scope 
of our stores of cloths and trimmings, the pupils are allowed to 
choose any favorite color, and also within moderate limits to 
select both shape and cut ; this we scrupulously observe, for by 
the color you may find out people's bent of mind, and by the 
cut, the style of life. Yet there is one special peculiarity of 
human nature which makes a more accurate judgment to some 
extent difficult ; this is the spirit of imitation — the tendency to 
associate. It is very seldom that a pupil lights on anything 
that has not occurred before; for the most part they choose 



WILHELM MEI8 TEE'S WANDERJAHRE 171 

something familiar, what they see just before them. Still, this 
consideration does not remain unprofitable to us ; by means of 
such external signs they ally themselves to this or that party, 
join in here or there, and thus more general dispositions distin- 
guish themselves ; we learn to where each inclines and to what 
example he assimilates himself. Now, cases have been seen, in 
which the dispositions inclined towards the genefal, in which 
one fashion would extend itself to all, and every peculiarity 
tend towards losing itself in the totality. In a gentle way we 
try to put a stop to a tendency of this kind ; we allow our stores 
to run short ; one or other kind of stuff or ornament is no more 
to be had. We substitute something new, something attrac- 
tive ; through light colors, and short close cut we attract the 
cheerful ones ; by somber shades and comfortable, ample suits, 
the thoughtful ones, and thus gradually establish a balance. 
For we are altogether opposed to uniform ; it hides the charac- 
ter, and, more than any other disguise, conceals the peculiarities 
of the children from the sight of their superiors." 

With such and other conversation Wilhelm arrived at the 
frontier- of the district, and precisely at the point where the 
traveller, according to his old friend's direction, ought to leave 
it, in order to pursue his own private ends. 

On parting, the inspector first of all observed that Wilhelm 
might now wait until the grand festival for all their sympa- 
thizers in various ways was announced. To this all the j)arents 
would be invited, and able pupils be dismissed to the chances 
of free life. After that, he was informed, he might at his leisure 
enter the other districts, where, in accordance with peculiar 
principles, special instruction amidst the most perfect surround- 
ings was imparted and practiced. 

If we now seek out our friend again — for some time left to 
his own resources — we shall find him as he comes hither from 
the side of the level country into the Pedagogic Province. He 
comes across pastures and meadows, skirts on the dry down 
many a small lake, looks on bushy rather than wooded hills ; 



172 JOEANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

on all sides a free prospect over a land but little tilled. On 
such tracks it did not long remain doubtful that he was in the 
horse-breeding district, and he noticed here and there smaller 
and larger herds of these noble beasts of different sex and age. 
But all at once the horizon is covered with a fearful dust-cloud, 
which, rapidly looming nearer and nearer, completely conceals 
the whole breadth of the space, but at last, parted by a keen 
side-wind, is forced to disclose the tumult inside it. 

A large body of the said noble beasts rushes forward in full 
gallop ; they are guided and kept together by keepers on horse- 
back. The tremendous hurly-burly rushes past the traveller ; 
a fine boj^, amongst the keepers in charge, looks at him in aston- 
ishment, pulls up, jumps off, and embraces his father. 

Now questioning and explanation ensue. The son relates 
that he had had to put uj) with a good deal during the first 
probation time ; dispensing with his horse and going about on 
foot over ploughed lands and meadows, and, as he had declared 
beforehand, had not shown himself to advantage in the quiet 
toilsome country life. The harvest-feast had pleased him well 
enough ; but the tillage afterwards, the ploughing, digging, and 
waiting, not at all. He had certainly occupied himself with 
the necessary and useful domestic animals, but always lazily 
and discontentedly until he was at last promoted to the more 
lively business of riding. The occupation of looking after the 
mares and foals was tedious enough; meanwhile if one sees 
before one a lively little beast, that in three or four years' time 
will perhaps carry one about, it is quite a different sort of thing 
from troubling oneself about calves and sucking pigs, of which 
the end and aim is to be well fed and fattened, and then sold. 

With the growth of his boy, who was now really reaching 
youth's estate, with his healthy condition, and a certain merry 
freedom, not to say cleverness, in his talk, his father had good 
reason to be content. The two now proceeded to follow quickly 
on horseback the speeding convoy, past remote-lying and ex- 
tensive farms to the village or country town where the great 
market was held. There inci:edible confusion was in full career, 



WILHELM MEI8TER '8 WANDERJAHRE 17S 

and it was impossible to distinguish whether the wares or the 
merchants raised the more dust. From all countries would-be 
purchasers here meet together in order to acquire animals of 
fine breed and careful rearing ; and one might think that one 
heard all the tongues of the earth. In the midst of it all, too, 
sounds the lively music of the most powerful wind instruments, 
and everything indicates movement, vigor, and life. 

Our traveller now again meets the overseer already known to 
him of old, and falls in company with other clever men, who 
manage quietly and no less unnoticeably to maintain discipline 
and order. Wilhelm believing that here again he sees an in- 
stance of exclusive occupation, and in spite of its seeming 
breadth of a narrow course of life, is anxious to ascertain by 
what other means they are accustomed to train the pupils, in 
order to prevent the youth — in such a wild, and in some degree 
savage, occupation of rearing and training beasts — from becom- 
ing a wild beast himself. And thus it was very gratifying to 
him to learn that with this same violent and rough-seeming 
vocation was united the most delicate in the world, the practice 
and the learning of languages. 

At this moment the father missed his son from his side ; he 
saw him through the interstices of the crowd eagerly bargain- 
ing and arguing with a young peddler over some trifles. In a 
short time he altogether lost him. On the overseer's inquiring 
the reason of a certain embarrassment and abstraction, and 
hearing in reply that it was on his son's account, " Never mind 
that," he said, to reassure the father, " he is not lost. But to 
show you how we keep our charges together " and there- 
upon he blew shrilly on a whistle that hung at his breast. In 
a moment it was answered by dozens from all sides. The man 
went on : "I will let this serve for the present, it is only a signal 
that the overseer is in the neighborhood and happens to want 
to know how many hear him. On a second signal they keep 
quiet, but make themselves ready; on the third they answer 
and come rushing up. Moreover, these signals are multiplied 
in very many ways and for special uses." A more open space 



174 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

had suddenly cleared itself round about them ; they were able 
to speak more freely whilst walking towards the adjoining 
heights. 

" We were led to this practice of languages," proceeded the 
overseer, " by the fact that Ave find here youths from all parts 
of the world. Now it is to prevent the people of one country 
from clanning together, as usually happens abroad, and form- 
ing parties asunder from the other nations, that we try by free 
communion of speech to bring them nearer to one another. 
But a universal knowledge of language is most necessary, in- 
asmuch as at this fair every foreigner is glad to find a sufficient 
means of intercourse in his own sounds and expressions, and at 
the same time all j)ossible convenience in bargaining and deal- 
ing. Yet in order that no Babylonish confusion, no corruption 
of speech shall ensue, one language only is sjDoken in common, 
month by month throughout the year, in accordance with the 
principle that one should learn nothing that has to be made 
compulsory except the rudiments. 

" We look upon our scholars," said the overseer, " as so many 
swimmers, who in the element that threatens to swallow them 
feel themselves with wonder to be lighter, and are borne up 
and carried forward by it — and so it is with everything that man 
undertakes. Yet if one of our j)upils shows a special inclina- 
tion for this or that language, provision is made even in the 
midst of this tumultuous-seeming life, which affords withal very 
many quiet, idle, and lonely, nay, tedious hours, for true and 
thorough instruction. You would have some difficulty in pick- 
ing out our equestrian grammarians, amongst whom there are 
verily a few pedants, from amidst these bearded and beardless 
centaurs. Your Felix has set himself to Italian, and since 
melodious singing, as you know already, pervades everything 
in our institutions, you might hear him, in the monotony of a 
herdsman's life, bring out many a ditty with taste and feeling. 
Activity and practical ability are far more reconcilable with 
efficient instruction than one thinks." 

As every district has its own peculiar festival, the guest was 



WILSELM MEISTER'S WANDEBJAERE l75 

led to the domain of instrumental music. Bordering on the 
plains, it at once exhibited pleasantly and gracefully diversified 
valleys, little narrow copses, gentle brooks, by the banks of 
which a moss-grown rock slyly peeped out here and there 
amidst the turf. Scattered habitations, surrounded by bushes, 
were to be seen upon the hills ; in gentle dales the houses clus- 
tered nearer to each other. Those cottages, set gracefully apart, 
were so far from each other, that no musical sound either true 
or false could be heard from one to the other. 

They now approached a wide space, built and covered round 
about, where men standing shoulder to shoulder seemed on the 
tiptoe of attention and expectation. Just as the guest entered, 
a powerful symphony on all the instruments commenced, the 
full-toned strength and tenderness of which he could not but 
admire. 

By the side of this roomily-constructed orchestra stood a 
smaller one, which attracted special attention ; upon it were 
3^ounger and older scholars. Each held his instrument in read- 
iness without playing on it. These were they who as yet were 
not able or did not venture to join in with the whole. One 
noticed with interest how they were standing as it were at the 
spring, and heard it declared that such a festiv-al seldom j^assed 
by without a genius in some one or other being suddenly 
developed . 

When vocal music also was brought forward in the intervals 
of the instrumental, there was no longer room to doubt that 
this too was in favor. Upon his inquiry, moreover, as to what 
further sort of education was joined in friendly union with this, 
the traveler learned that it was the art of poetry, and withal of 
the lyric sort. Their whole aim in this was that the two arts, 
each for and from itself, but at the same time in contrast to and 
in conjunction with each other, should be developed. The 
pupils learn to know one as w^ell as the other in their special 
limitations : then they are taught how they mutually limit, and 
again mutually emancipate one another. 

To the rhythm of poetry the tone-artist opposes the division 



176 JOEANN WOLF GANG VON GOETHE 

and movement of time. But here the sway of music over poetry 
soon manifests itself — for if the latter, as is proper and neces- 
sary, always keeps its quantities as clearly as possible in view, 
yet for the musician few syllables are definitely long or short ; 
he destroys at pleasure the most conscientious proceedings of 
the dealer in rhythm — nay, actually converts prose into song ; 
whence ensue the most wonderful jDOSsibilities, and the poet 
would very soon feel himself annihilated were he not able, on 
his own part, to inspire the musician with reverence by means 
of lyric tenderness and boldness, and to call forth new feelings, 
at one time in the most delicate gradation, at another by the 
most abrupt transitions. 

The singers one finds here are for the most part themselves 
poets. Dancing, too, is taught in its rudiments; so that all 
these accomplishments may diffuse themselves methodically 
throughout the whole of these regions. 
► When the guest was conducted across the next boundary he 
suddenly beheld quite a different style of building. The houses 
were no longer scattered, and no more of the cottage sort ; they 
rather appeared to be set together with regularity — solid and 
handsome from without, roomy, convenient, and elegant within. 
Here one perceived an unconfined and well-built town, adapted 
to its situation. Here plastic art and its kindred crafts are at 
home, and a stillness quite peculiar prevails in these places. 

The plastic artist, it is true, always considers himself in 
relation to whatever lives and moves amidst mankind ; but 
his occupation is a solitary one, and, by the strangest contra- 
diction, no other, perhaps, so decidedly calls for a living envi- 
ronment. Here, then, does each one create in silence what is 
soon to occupy the eyes of men forever. A Sabbath stillness 
reigns over the whole place, and if one did not notice here and 
there the chipping of the stone-mason, or the measured blows 
of carpenters, just now busily employed in finishing a splendid 
building, not a sound would disturb the air. 

Our traveler was struck with the seriousness, the wonderful 
strictness, with which beginners, as well as the more advanced, 



WILHELM MEISTEB'S WAJSfDERJAHBE 111 

were treated ; it seemed as if no one essayed anything by his 
own strength and power, but as if a hidden spirit animated all 
throughout, guiding them to one single great end. Neither 
draft nor sketch was anywhere to be seen ; every stroke was 
drawn with care. And when the traveler asked the guide for 
an explanation of the whole process, the latter remarked, " The 
imagination is of itself a vague, inconstant faculty, whilst the 
whole merit of the plastic artist consists in this, namely, in 
learning ever more and more to define and grasp it firmly, nay, 
even at last to elevate it to the level of the present." 

He was reminded of the necessity in other arts of more cer- 
tain principles. '^ Would the musician allow a pupil to strike 
wildly at the strings, or to invent intervals according to his own 
caprice and pleasure ? Here it is remarkable that nothing is 
to be left to the learner's discretion. The element in which he 
is to work is given definitely, the tool that he has to handle is 
placed in his hand, the very style and method by which he is 
to avail himself of them (I mean the fingering) he finds pre- 
scribed, by which one member gets out of the way of another, 
and gets the proper road ready for its successor, by which orderly 
cooperation alone, the impossible becomes possible at last. But 
what mostly justifies us in strict demands and definite laws, is 
that it is precisely genius, the inborn talent, that grasps them 
first, and yields them the most willing obedience. Only me- 
diocrity would fain substitute its limited specialty for the un- 
limited whole, and glorify its false ideas under the pretence of 
an uncontrollable originality and independence. This, however, 
we do not let pass, but we protect our pupils against all false 
steps, whereby a great part of life, nay, often the whole life, is 
confused and broken up. With the genius we love best to deal, 
for he is specially inspired with the good sjDirit of recognizing 
quickly what is useful to him. He sees that Art is called Art, 
precisely because it is not Nature ; he accommodates himself to 
the proper respect even for that which might be called conven- 
tional, for what else is this but that the best men have agreed 
to regard the necessary, the inevitable, as the best? And is it 

S. M.— 12 



178 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

not successful in every case ? To the great assistance of the 
teachers, the three reverences and their symbols are introduced 
and inculcated here too, as everywhere with us, with some varia- 
tion in conformity with the nature of the business that prevails." 

As the traveler was led further around, he was constrained 
to wonder at the fact, that the city seemed to extend itself for- 
ever, streets growing out of streets, and affording numberless 
fine views. The exterior of the buildings expressed their object 
unambiguously : they were substantial and imposing, less showy 
than beautiful. After the nobler and more solemn one in the 
middle of the town came those of more cheerful aspect, until 
at last charming suburbs, of a graceful character, spread away 
towards the open country, dwindling away finally in the shape 
of country villas. 

The traveler could not avoid remarking here that the habi- 
tations of the musicians in the preceding region were, in respect 
to beauty and size, in no way to be compared with the present 
ones in which painters, sculptors, and architects dwelt. The 
answer given to him was that this lay in the nature of things. 
The musician must always be absorbed within himself, to shape 
out his inmost thought and to bring it forth. He has not to 
flatter the sense of sight ; the eye very easily supplants the ear, 
and tempts outward the spirit from within. The plastic artist, 
on the contrary, must Hve in the outer world, and make his 
inner nature manifest, as it were unconsciously, on and in the 
external world. Plastic artists must live like kings and gods ; 
how otherwise would they build and adorn for kings and gods ? 
They must at last raise themselves above the ordinary so far 
that the whole community may feel honored in and by their 

works. 

Our friend then desired the explanation of another paradox 

why is it that just on these festivals, which in other regions 

are such lively and tumultuously excited days, here the greatest 
quiet prevails, and work is not even exhibited ? 

" A plastic artist," he said, " requires no festival ; to him the 
whole year is a festival. When he has accomplished anything 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHRE 179 

excellent, it stands afterwards, as it did before, in his sight and 
in the sight of the whole world. In this no repetition is needed, 
no new effort, no fresh success, such as the musician is forever 
tormented by : who for that reason is not to be grudged the most 
splendid festival amidst the most numerous audience." 

" But yet," replied Wilhelm, " on days like this one would be 
glad to see an exhibition in which the three years' progress of 
the best pupils might be examined and criticised with pleasure." 

" In other places," he was told, " an exhibition may be neces- 
sary ; wdth us it is not ; our whole end and aim is exhibition. 
Look here at the buildings of every sort, all carried out by 
pupils ; after plans discussed and revised, it is true, a hundred 
times ; for one who builds must not potter about and make ex- 
periments. What has to remain standing must stand well, and 
suffice, if not for eternity, at any rate for a considerable time. 
We may commit ever- so many faults, but we must not build 
any. With sculptors we deal a little more leniently, most len- 
iently of all with painters; they may experiment, here and 
there, each in his own style. It is open to them to choose in 
the inside or outside spaces of buildings, in the open squares, a 
spot which they will decorate. They make their ideas public, 
and if one is in any degree worthy of approbation, the execution 
is agreed to ; but in one of two ways — either with the privilege 
of taking the work away, sooner or later, should it cease to please 
the artist himself, or with the condition of leaving the work, 
when once set up irremovably in its place. The most choose 
the former, and reserve the privilege for themselves, in which 
they are always well advised. The second case seldom occurs ; 
and it is observable that the artists then rely less upon them- 
selves, hold long conferences with their comrades and critics, 
and by that means manage to produce works really worthy of 
being valued and made permanent." 

After all this Wilhelm did not neglect to inquire what other 
instruction was given besides, and he was informed that this 
consisted of poetry, and in fact of epic poetry. 

Yet it must needs appear strange to our friend when they 



180 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

added that the pupils are not allowed to read or to recite the 
completed poems of ancient and modern poets. " Merely a series 
of myths, traditions, and legends is briefly imparted to them. 
Thus we soon recognize by pictorial or poetic expression, the 
special productive power of the genius devoted to one or the 
other art. Poets and artists both occupy themselves at the same 
well-spring, and each one tries to guide the stream towards his 
own side for his own advantage, so as to attain his end accord- 
ing to his requirements ; at which he succeeds much better 
than if he set about making over again what has been made 
already." 

The traveler had an opportunity of seeing the process him- 
self. Several painters were busy in one room ; a lively young 
companion was telling a quite simple story very circumstan- 
tially, so that he employed almost as many words as they did 
pencil-strokes to complete his exposition in the most rounded 
style possible. 

They assured Wilhelm that in their joint work the friends 
entertained themselves very pleasantly, and that in this way 
improvisators were often developed who were able to arouse 
great enthusiasm in the twofold representation. 

Our friend now turned his inquiries again to plastic art. 
*' You have," he said, " no exhibition, and consequently, I sup- 
pose, no award of prizes." 

" We have not, in point of fact," replied the other, " but, quite 
close by here, we can let you see what we regard as more useful." 

They turned into a large hall, lighted with good effect from 
above. A large circle of busy artists was first seen, from the 
midst of whom a colossal group, favorably placed, reared itself. 
Vigorous male and female forms, in powerful poses, reminded 
one of that splendid fight between youthful heroes and Ama- 
zons, in which hate and animosity at last resolve themselves 
into mutual and faithful alliance. This remarkably involved 
piece of art-work was seen to equal advantage from any point 
around it. Artists were sitting and standing in a large circle, 
each occupied after his own fashion : the painter at his easel, 



WILHELM MEISTER'8 WANDERJAHRE 181 

the draughtsman at his drawing-board, some modehng in the 
round, some in bas-rehef ; architects were even making draw- 
ings for the pedestal, upon which a similar work of art was after- 
wards to be placed. Everyone taking part in it adopted his 
own method in copying. Painters and draughtsmen developed 
the group in the flat, carefully, indeed, so as not to spoil it, but 
to give as much as possible. The work in bas-relief was treated 
in precisely the same manner. Only one had reproduced the 
whole group on a smaller scale, and in certain movements and 
arrangement of members he really seemed to have surpassed 
the model. 

It now appeared that this was the designer of the model, who, 
before its execution in marble, was now submitting it not to a 
critical but to a practical test ; and who, by taking accurate note 
of everything that each of his fellow-workers, according to his 
own method and way of thinking, saw, preserved, or altered in 
it, was enabled to turn it to his own advantage; with this object, 
that ultimately, when the perfect work should come forth chis- 
eled in marble, though undertaken, designed, and executed by 
only one, yet still it might seem to belong to all. 

In this room, too, the greatest silence reigned ; but the director 
raised his voice and cried, " Who is there here, who, in the pres- 
ence of this motionless work, can so move the imagination with 
the excellence of his words that all that we can see transfixed 
here shall again become resolved without losing its character, 
so that we may convince ourselves that what the artist has here 
laid hold of is indeed the worthiest ? " 

Expressly called on by them all, a beautiful youth left his 
work, and began by delivering a quiet discourse, in which he 
seemed merely to describe the present work ; but soon he threw 
himself into the peculiar region of poetry, plunged into the midst 
of the action, and controlled this element to a marvel. Little 
by little his rendering was elevated by brilliant declamation, to 
such a height that the rigid group seemed to turn upon its 
axis, and the number of the figures seemed thereby doubled and 
trebled. Wilhelm stood enraptured, and at last cried, " Who 



182 JOEANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

can longer refrain from passing on into actual song and rhyth- 
mic verse ? " 

" This I would beg to refuse," replied the overseer, " for if our 
excellent sculptor will speak sincerely, he will confess that our 
poet hardly pleases him, and simply because the two artists 
stand as far as possible from one another : on the other hand, 
I would wager that here and there a painter has appropriated 
from him certain living traits. Yet there is a gentle kindly 
song that I might allow our friend to hear, one that you deliver 
with such sweet seriousness : it relates to art as a whole, and 
does me good myself whenever I hear it." 

After a pause, in which they beckoned to each other, and 
made arrangements by signs, the following fine heart-and-spirit- 
stirring song resounded from all sides : 

" To invent and bring to ending, 

Artist, bide thou oft alone : 
Joy to reap from toilsome spending, 

Gayly to thy friends begone ! 
See them as a whole compacted, 

And discern thine own career; 
Deeds in many a year enacted 

In thy neighbor will be clear. 

** First conceiving, then presenting, 

Ranging shapes in order wise, 
Each of them the rest accenting 

Till at last they all suffice. 
Well invented, render'd neatly, 

Feelingly and thoroughly done. 
Thus the artist hath discreetly 

Power from everlasting won. 

" As the thousand forms of nature 

Of one God alone do tell, 
So does one enduring feature 

In Art's wide domain prevail. 
This, the sense of Truth Eternal, 

Beauty dons as her array, 
And unharmed by light supernal 

Gazes on the brightest day. 



WILHELM MEISTER'S WANDERJAHRE 183 

" As the speaker, as the singer 

Blithely fare in. rhyme or prose, 
Fresh heneath the painter's finger 

Must bloom forth Life's joyous rose. 
With her sisters round her closing, 

With the fi'uits that autumn brings, 
Thus the mysteries disclosing 

Of Life's deeply hidden springs. 

" Form from form do thou dissever, 

Fair, in shapes a thousand fold ; 
Of man's image glad forever 

That a God it did enfold. 
Stand in brotherhood united, 

Whatsoe'er your work may be ; 
And like sacred incense lighted 

Rise on high in melody." 

"Wilhelm might well have let all this pass, although it must 
have seemed to him very paradoxical, and, had he not seen it 
with his eyes, actually impossible. But when they proceeded, 
in beautiful sequence, to declare and make it all clear to him 
openly and frankly, he hardly needed to ask a single question 
for further information ; yet he did not forbear, at last, to ad- 
dress his conductor as follows : 

" I see that here everything desirable in life has been pro- 
vided for very wisely ; but tell me, besides, which region can 
manifest a similar solicitude for dramatic poetry, and where 
might I gain information on that subject? I have looked 
round amongst all your edifices, and find none that could be 
destined for such an object." 

" In reply to this question we cannot deny that there is noth- 
ing of the sort to be met with in the whole of our province, for 
the theater presupposes an idle crowd, perhaps even a rabble, 
the like of which is not to be found amongst us; for such 
people, if they do not go away disgusted of their own accord, 
are conveyed across the frontier. Be assured,, however, that in 
our universally active institution so important a point as this 
has been well considered; but no region could be found for it; 



184 JOEANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

some weighty objection occurred in every case. Who is there 
amongst our pupils who would have easily made up his mind 
to awaken in this mass, with feigned merriment or hypocritical 
sorrow, an unreal emotion inconsistent with the time, and 
thereby produce in alterations an ever-dubious pleasure ? Such 
foolishness we considered altogether dangerous, and could not 
connect it with our serious aim." 

"And yet it is said," replied Wilhelm, "that this widely- 
encompassing art requires all the others together." 

" Not at all," was the reply ; " she makes use of the others, 
but spoils them. I do not blame the actor when he associates 
himself with the painter ; but still the painter, in such a partner- 
ship, is lost. The actor, without any conscience, will, for his 
own momentary ends, and with no small profit, use up all that 
art and life offer him ; the painter, on the other hand, who 
would reap some advantage again from the theater, will always 
find himself at a disadvantage, and the musician will be in the 
same case. The arts seem to me like so man}^ sisters, of whom 
the greater number have been disposed to economy, but one of 
trivial disposition has had a mind to appropriate the posses- 
sions and property of the whole family. The theater is in this 
situation : it has an ambiguous origin, which, whether as art or 
handicraft or dilettanteism, it can never wholly disguise." 
■ "Wilhelm looked down with a deep sigh, for all the enjoyment 
and the sorrow that he had had from and on the stage were 
suddenly present to him. He blessed the good men who were 
wise enough to spare their pupils such pain, who, from con- 
viction and principle, banished these perils from their circle. 

His conductor, however, did not leave him long to these 
meditations, but proceeded : " As it is our highest and holiest 
principle to misdirect no disposition or talent, we cannot hide 
from ourselves the fact, that amongst so great a number, a 
natural mimetic gift may very likely be decisively displayed. 
This, however, shows itself in an irrepressible desire to ape the 
characters, figures, motion, and speech of others. This we do 
not encourage, it is true, but we observe the pupil carefully, and 



WILHELM MEISTER'8 WANDEBJAHBE 185 

if he remains throughout true to his nature, we have put our- 
selves in connection with the large theaters of all nations, and 
thither we send any one of tried capacity, in order that, like 
the duck upon the pond, he may with all speed be guided on 
the stage to the future waddling and quacking of his life." 

Wilhelm listened to this with patience, yet only with partial 
conviction, and perhaps with some annoyance ; for so wonder- 
fully is man minded, that whilst he is really persuaded of the 
worthlessness of some favorite subject or other, and will turn 
away from, and even execrate himself, yet still he will not bear 
to have it treated in the same way by any one else, and prob- 
ably the spirit of contradiction which dwells in all mankind 
is never more vigorously and effectively excited than in such 
a case. 

The editor of these papers may even confess that he allows 
this wonderful passage to pass with some reluctance. Has he 
not, too, in man}'- senses devoted more than a due share of life 
and strength to the theater ? and would it be easy to convince 
him that this has been an inexcusable error, a fruitless exer- 
tion ? 

However, we have not time to apply ourselves ill-humoredly 
to such recollections and underlying feelings, for our friend 
finds himself agreeably surprised on seeing before him, once 
more, one of the Three, and one especially sympathetic. A 
communicative gentleness, telling of the purest peace of soul, 
imparted itself most revivingly : the Wanderer could approach 
him trustfully, and feel that his trust was returned. 

He now learned that the Superior was at present in the sanc- 
tuary, and was there instructing, teaching, and blessing, whilst 
the Three arranged severally to visit all the regions, and in 
every place — after obtaining the most minute information, and 
arranging with the subordinate overseers to carry forward what 
had been begun — to establish what had been newly determined, 
and thus faithfully fulfill their high duty. 

This excellent man it was who gave him a more general 
view of their internal economy and external connections, as well 



186 JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 

as a knowledge of the reciprocal effect of all the different 
regions; nor did he fail to make clear how a pupil could be 
transferred from one to the other after a longer or shorter 
period. Enough, everything fully harmonized with what he 
already knew. At the same time, the account given of his son 
was a source of great satisfaction, and the plan on which they 
intended to proceed with him must needs obtain his entire 
approbation. 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 

1786-1855 

Mary Russell Mitford was born at Alresford, in Hampshire, Eng- 
land, in 1786. She was highly successful as an author and as a com- 
piler. Her fame rests chiefly upon her exquisite portraitures of Eng- 
lish village life, in which she has scarcely a rival. In her preface to 
"Our Village " she says : " The writer may at least claim the merit of 
a hearty love of her subject, and of that local and personal familiarity 
which only a long residence in one neighborhood could have enabled 
her to attain. Her descriptions have always been written on the spot, 
and at the moment, and in nearly every instance with the closest and 
most resolute fidelity to the place and the people. " Miss Mitford wrote 
a number of dramatic works, which were well received, and her 
" Eecollections of a Literary Life," published in 1851, added greatly 
to her reputation. 

Characterization 

The following dialogue by Professor John Wilson, in ' ^ Nodes Ambro- 
siance " (taken from Blackwood's Magazine), aflPords a contemporary 
estimate of Miss Mitford's work. Wilson himself appears in his favor- 
ite character of Christopher North, and the shepherd represents the 
poet, James Hogg, the author of "Kilmeny." By means of such 
felicitous "conversations," Professor Wilson was accustomed to review 
the literature of his day. 

Tickler. Master Christopher North, there's Miss Mitford, author of, 
'' Our Village," an admirable person in all respects, of whom you have 
never, to my recollection, taken any notice in the magazine. What is 
the meaning of that ? Is it an oversight ? Or have you omitted her 
name intentionally from your eulogies on our female worthies ? 

North. I am waiting for her second volume. Miss Mitford has not, 
in my opinion, either the pathos or humor of Washington Irving ; but 
she excels him in vigorous conception of character, and in the truth of 
her pictures of English life and manners. Her writings breathe a 
sound, pure, and healthy morality, and are pervaded by a genuine 
rural spirit — the spirit of Merry England. Every line bespeaks the 
lady. 

187 



188 MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 

Shepherd. I admire Miss Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner 
at her being able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms, 
wi' sofas and settees, and about the fine folk in them, seein themsels in 
lookin-gl asses frae tap to tae ; but what puzzles the like o' me is her 
pictures o' poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither 
neerdoweels, and o' huts and hovels without riggin ' by the wayside, 
and the cottages o' honest puir men, and byres,'-' and barns, and stack- 
yards, and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship aneath trees, 
and at the gable ends o' farm-houses, atween lads and lasses as laigh^ in 
life as the servants in her father's ha'. That's the puzzle and that's the 
praise. 

The Village Schoolmistress 

(From "Our Village") 

Women, fortunately perhaps for their happiness and their 
virtue, have, as compared with men, so few opportunities of 
acquiring permanent distinction, that it is rare to find a female, 
unconnected with literature or with history, whose name is 
remembered after her monument is defaced, and the brass on 
her coffin-lid is corroded. Such, however, was the case with 
Dame Eleanor, the widow of Sir Richard Lacy, whose name, at 
the end of three centuries, continued to be as freshly and as fre- 
quently spoken, as " familiar" a " household word," in the little 
village of Aberleigh, as if she had flourished there yesterday. 
Her memory was embalmed by a deed of charity and of good- 
ness. She had founded and endowed a girls' school for " the 
instruction " (to use the words of the deed) " of twenty poor 
children, and the maintenance of one discreet and godly 
matron ; " and the school still continued to be called after its 
foundress, and the very spot on which the schoolhouse stood, 
to be known by the name of Lady Lacy's Green. 

It was a spot worthy of its destination — a spot of remarkable 
cheerfulness and beauty. The Green was small, of irregular 
shape, and situate at a confluence of shady lanes. Half the 
roads and paths of the parish met there, probably for the con- 
venience of crossing in that place, by a stone bridge of one arch 

1 roofs 2 cow-sheds ' low 



TEE VILLAGE SCHOOLMISTRESS 189 

covered with ivy, the winding rivulet which intersected the 
whole village, and which, sweeping in a narrow channel round 
the school garden, widened into a stream of some consequence 
in the richly-wooded meadows beyond. The banks of the 
brook, as it wound its glittering course over the green, were set, 
here and there, with clumps of forest trees, chiefly bright green 
elms, and aspens with their quivering leaves and their pale 
shining bark ; whilst a magnificent beech stood alone near the 
gate leading to the school, partly overshadowing the little court 
in which the house was placed. The building itself was a 
beautiful small structure, in the ornamented style of Elizabeth's 
day, with pointed roofs and pinnacles, and clustered chimneys, 
and casement windows ; the whole house en wreathed and gar- 
landed by a most luxuriant vine. 

The date of the erection, 1563, was cut in a stone inserted in 
the brick-work above the porch : but the foundress had, with an 
unostentatious modesty, withheld her name ; leaving it, as she 
safely might, to the grateful recollection of the successive gen- 
erations who profited by her benevolence. Altogether it was a 
most gratifying scene to the eye and to the heart. No one ever 
saw Lady Lacy's schoolhouse without admiration, especially in 
the play-hour at noon, when the children, freed from " restraint 
that sweetens liberty," were clustered under the old beech-tree, 
reveling in their innocent freedom, running, jumping, shout- 
ing, and laughing with all their might; the only sort of riot 
which it is pleasant to witness. The painter and the philan- 
thropist might contemplate that scene with equal delight. 

The right of appointing both the mistress and the scholars 
had been originally invested in the Lacy family, to whom 
nearly the whole of the parish had at one time belonged. But 
the estates, the manor, the hall-house, had long passed into 
other hands and other names, and this privilege of charity was 
now the only possession which the heirs of Lady Lacy retained 
in Aberleigh. Reserving to themselves the right of nominating 
the matron, her descendants had therefore delegated to the 
vicar and the parish oflicers the selection of the children, and 



190 MART RU88ELL MITFOBD 

the general regulation of the school — a sort of council of 
regency, which, simple and peaceful as the government seems, 
a disputatious churchwarden or a sturdy overseer would some- 
times contrive to render sufficiently stormy. I have known 
as much canvassing and almost as much ill-will in a contested 
election for one of Lady Lacy's scholarships, as for a scholar- 
ship in grander places, or even for an M. P.-ship in the next 
borough; and the great schism between the late Farmer 
Brookes and all his coadjutors, as to whether the original uni- 
form of little green stuff gowns, with white bibs and aprons, 
tippets and mob, should be commuted for modern cotton 
frocks and cottage bonnets, fairly set the parish by the ears. 
Owing to the good farmer's glorious obstinacy, (which I sup- 
pose he called firmness,) the green-gownians lost the day. I 
believe that, as a matter of calculation, the man might be right, 
and that his costume was cheaper and more convenient ; but 1 
am sure that I should have been against him, right or wrong : 
the other dress was so pretty, so primitive, so neat, so becom- 
ing ; the little lasses looked like rose-buds in the midst of their 
leaves: besides, it was the old traditionary dress — the dress 
contrived and approved by Lady Lacy. Oh ! it should never 
have been changed, never ! 

Since there was so much contention in the election of pupils, 
it was perhaps lucky for the vestry that the exercise of the more 
splendid piece of j)atronage, the appointment of a mistress, did 
not enter into its duties. Mr. Lacy, the representative of the 
foundress, a man of fortune in a distant county, generally 
bestowed the situation on some old dependant of his family. 
During the churchwardenship of Farmer Brookes, no less than 
three village gouvernantes arrived at Aberleigh — a quick suc- 
cession ! It made more than half the business of our zealous 
and bustling man of office, an amateur in such matters, to 
instruct and overlook them. The first importation was Dame 
Whitaker, a person of no small importance, who had presided 
as head nurse over two generations of the Lacys, and was now, 
on the dispersion of the last set of her nurslings to their differ- 



THE VILLAGE 8CH00LMI8TBE88 191 

ent schools, and an unlucky quarrel with a favorite lady's maid, 
promoted and banished to this distant government. Nobody 
could well be more unfit for her new station, or better suited to 
her old. She was a nurse from top to toe, round, portly, smiling, 
with a coaxing voice, and an indolent manner ; much addicted 
to snuff and green tea, to sitting still, to telling long stories, and 
to humoring children. She spoiled every brat she came near, 
just as she had been used to spoil the little Master Edwards 
and Miss Julias of her ancient dominions. She could not have 
scolded if she would — the gift was not in her. Under her 
misrule the school grew into sad disorder; the girls not only 
learned nothing, but unlearned what they knew before; work 
was lost — even the new shifts of the Vicar's lady ; books were 
torn; and for the climax of evil, no sampler^ was prepared 
to carry round at Christmas, from house to house — the first time 
such an omission had occurred within the memory of man. 

Farmer Brookes was at his wits' end. He visited the school 
six days in the week, to admonish and reprove ; he even went 
nigh to threaten that he would work a sampler himself; and 
finally bestowed on the unfortunate ex-nurse the nick-name of 
Queen Log,^ a piece of disrespect, which, together with other 
grievances, proved so annoying to poor Dame Whitaker, that 
she found the air of Aberleigh disagree with her, patched up 
a peace with her old enemy the lady's maid, abdicated that 
unruly and rebellious principality, the school, and retired with 
great delight to her quiet home in the deserted nursery, where, 
as far as I know, she still remains. 

The grief of the children on losing this most indulgent non- 
instructress was not mitigated by the appearance or demeanor 
of her successor, who at first seemed a preceptress after Farmer 
Brookes's own heart, a perfect Queen Stork. Dame Banks was 

1 a collection ol needle-work patterns, as letters or the like 
^ " Queen Log" and " Queen Stork " are suggested by a celebrated fable of 
^sop, in which it is related that the frogs petitioned Jupiter for a king, and 
that they were first given a log, which did nothing but make a single terrifying 
splash in the water. In contempt for this inane monarch, they petitioned for 
one of another sort, when a stork was sent to devour them. 



192 MABT BU8SELL MITFORD 

the widow of Mr. Lacy's gamekeeper ; a little thin woman, with 
a hooked nose, a sharp voice, and a prodigious activity of 
tongue. She scolded all day long ; and, for the first week, 
passed for a great teacher. After that time it began to be dis- 
covered that, in spite of her lessons, the children did not learn ; 
notwithstanding her rating they did not mind, and in the midst 
of a continual bustle nothing was ever done. Dame Banks was 
in fact a well-intentioned, worthy woman, with a restless, irri- 
table temper, a strong desire to do her duty, and a woeful igno- 
rance how to set about it. She was rather too old to be taught 
either ; at least she required a gentler instructor than the good 
churchwarden ; and so much ill-will was springing up between 
them that he had even been heard to regret the loss of Dame 
Whitaker's quietness, when very suddenly poor Dame Banks fell 
ill, and died. The sword had worn the scabbard ; but she was 
better than she seemed ; a thoroughly well-meaning woman — 
grateful, pious, and charitable ; even our man of office admit- 
ted this. 

The next in succession was one with whom my trifling pen, 
dearly as that light and fluttering instrument loves to dally 
and disport over the surface of things, must take no saucy free- 
dom ; one of whom we all felt it impossible to speak or to think 
without respect ; one who made Farmer Brookes's office of ad- 
viser a sinecure, by putting the whole school, himself included, 
into its proper place, setting everybody in order, and keeping 
them so. I don't know how she managed, unless by good sense 
and good humor, and that happy art of government, which 
seems no art at all, because it is so perfect ; but the children 
were busy and happy, the vestry pleased, and the church- 
warden contented. All went well under Mrs. Allen. 

She was an elderly woman, nearer perhaps to seventy than 
to sixty, and of an exceedingly venerable and prepossessing ap- 
pearance. Delicacy was her chief characteristic — a delicacy so 
complete that it pervaded her whole person, from her tall, 
slender figure, her fair, faded complexion, and her silver hair 
to the exquisite nicety of dress by which at all hours and sea- 



THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMISTRESS 193 

sons, from Sunday morning to Saturday night, she was inva- 
riably distinguished. The soil of the day was never seen on 
her apparel ; dust would not cling to her snowy caps and hand- 
kerchiefs ; such was the art magic of her neatness. Her very 
pins did their office in a different manner from those belonging 
to other people. Her manner was gentle, cheerful, and court- 
eous, with a simplicity and propriety of expression that per- 
plexed all listeners ; it seemed so exactly what belongs to the 
highest birth and the highest breeding. 

She was humble, very humble ; but her humility was evi- 
dently the result of a truly Christian sjDirit, and would equally 
have distinguished her in any station. The poor people, always 
nice judges of behavior, felt, they did not know why, that she was 
their suj)erior ; the gentry of the neighborhood suspected her to 
be their equal — some clergyman's or officer's widow, reduced in 
circumstances; and would have treated her as such, had she not, 
on discovering their mistake, eagerly undeceived them. She 
had been, she said, all her life a servant, the personal attendant 
of one dear mistress, on whose decease she had been recom- 
mended to Mr. Lacy; and to his kindness, under Providence, 
was indebted for a home and a provision for her helpless age, 
and the still more helpless youth of a poor orphan, far dearer to 
her than herself. This avowal, although it changed the charac- 
ter of -the respect paid to Mrs. Allen, was certainly not calcu- 
lated to diminish its amount ; and the new mistress of Lady 
Lacy's school, and the beautiful order of her house and garden, 
continued to be the pride and admiration of Aberleigh. 

The orphan of whom she spoke was a little girl about eleven 
j'^ears old, who lived with her, and whose black frock bespoke 
the recent death of some relative. She had lately, Mrs. Allen 
said, lost her grandmother — her only remaining parent, and 
had now no friend but herself on earth ; but there was One 
above who was a Father to the fatherless, and he would protect 
poor Jane ! And as she said this, there was a touch of emotion, 
a break of the voice, a tremor on the lip, very unlike the usual 
cheerfulness and self-command of her manner. The child was 

S. M.— 13 



194 MABY RUSSELL MITFOBD 

evidently very dear to her. Jane was, indeed, a most interest- 
ing creature; not pretty — a girl of that age seldom is; the 
beauty of childhood is outgrown, that of youth not come ; and 
Jane could scarcely ever have had any other pretensions to 
prettiness than the fine expression of her dark gray eyes, and 
the general sweetness of her countenance. She was pale, thin, 
and delicate ; serious and thoughtful far beyond her years ; 
averse from play, and shrinking from notice. Her fondness for 
Mrs. Allen, and her constant and unremitting attention to her 
health and comforts, were peculiarly remarkable. Every part 
of their small housewifery, that her height and strength and 
skill would enable her to perform, she insisted on doing, and 
many things far beyond her power she attempted. Never was 
so industrious or so handy a little maiden. Old Nelly Chun, the 
char-woman, who went once a week to the house, to wash and 
bake and scour, declared that Jane did more than herself; and 
to all who knew Nelly's opinion of her own doings, this praise 
appeared superlative. 

In the schoolroom she was equally assiduous, not as a learner, 
but as a teacher. None so clever as Jane in superintending 
the different exercises of the needle, the spelling-book and the 
slate. From the little work-woman's first attempt to insert 
thread into a pocket handkerchief, the digging and plowing 
of cambric, miscalled hemming, up to the nice and delicate 
mysteries of stitching and button-holing ; from the easy junc- 
tion of a b, ah, and h a, ha, to that tremendous sesquipedalian 
word irrejragability , at which even I tremble as I write ; from 
the Numeration Table to Practice, nothing came amiss to her. 
In figures she was particularly quick. Generally speaking, her 
patience with the other children, however dull or tiresome or 
giddy they might be, was exemplary ; but a false accountant, a 
stupid arithmetician, would put her out of humor. The only 
time I ever heard her sweet, gentle voice raised a note above 
its natural key, was in reprimanding Susan Wheeler, a sturdy, 
square-made, rosy-cheeked lass, as big again as herself, the 
dunce and beauty of the school, who had three times cast up a 



THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMISTRESS 195 

sum of three figures, and three times made the total wrong. 
Jane ought to have admired the ingenuity evinced by such a 
variety of error ; but she did not ; it fairly put her in a passion. 
She herself was not only clever in figures, but fond of them 
to an extraordinary degree — luxuriated in Long Division, and 
reveled in the Rule-of-Three. Had she been a boy, she would 
probably have been a great mathematician, and have won that 
fickle, fleeting, shadowy wreath, that crown made of the rain- 
bow, that vainest of all earthly pleasures, but which yet is a 
pleasure — Fame. 

Happier, far happier was the good, the lowly, the pious child, 
in her humble duties ! Grave and quiet as she seemed, she 
had many moments of intense and placid enjoyment, when the 
duties of the day were over, and she sat reading in the porch, 
by the side of Mrs. Allen, or walked with her in the meadows 
on a Sunday evening after church. Jane was certainly con- 
tented and happy ; and yet every one that saw her thought of 
her with that kind of interest which is akin to pity. There 
was a pale, fragile grace about her, such as we sometimes see in 
a rose which has blown in the shade ; or rather, to change the 
simile, the drooping and delicate look of a tender plant re- 
moved from a hothouse to the open air. We could not help 
feeling sure (notwithstanding our mistake with regard to Mrs. 
Allen) that this was indeed a transplanted flower ; and that the 
village school, however excellently her habits had become in- 
ured to her situation, was not her proper atmosphere. 

Several circumstances corroborated our suspicions. My lively 
young friend Sophia Grey, standing with me one day at the 
gate of the schoolhouse, where I had been talking with Mrs. 
Allen, remarked to me, in French, the sly, demure vanity with 
which Susan Wheeler, whose beauty had attracted her atten- 
tion, was observing and returning her glances. The playful 
manner in which Sophia described Susan's " regard furtif," 
made me smile ; and looking accidentally at Jane, I saw that 
she was smiling too, clearly comprehending and enjoying the 
full force of the pleasantry. She must understand French ; 



196 MABY RUSSELL MITFORD 

and when questioned, she confessed she did, and thankfully 
accepted the loan of books in that language. Another time, 
being sent on a message to the vicarage, and left for some 
minutes alone in the parlor, with a piano standing open 
in the room, she could not resist the temptation of touching 
the keys, and was discovered playing an air of Mozart, with 
great taste and execution. At this detection she blushed, as 
if caught in a crime, and hurried away in tears and without 
her message. It was clear that she had once learned music. 
But the surest proof that Jane's original station had been higher 
than that which she now filled, was the mixture of respect and 
fondness with which Mrs. Allen treated her, and the deep 
regret she sometimes testified at seeing her employed in any 
menial office. 

At last, elicited by some warm praise of the charming child, 
our good schoolmistress disclosed her story. Jane Mowbray 
was the granddaughter of the lady in whose service Mrs. Allen 
had passed her life. Her father had been a man of high family 
and splendid fortune ; had married beneath himself, as it was 
called, a friendless orphan, with no portion but beauty and 
virtue; and, on her death, which followed shortly on the birth 
of her daughter, had plunged into every kind of vice and 
extravagance. What need to tell a tale of sin and suffering? 

Mr. Mowbray had ruined himself, had ruiued all belonging to 
him, and finally had joined our armies abroad as a volunteer, 
and had fallen undistinguished in his first battle. The news of 
his death was fatal to his indulgent mother; and when she too 
died, Mrs. Allen blessed the Providence which, by throwing in 
her way a recommendation to Lady Lacy's school, had enabled 
her to support the dear object of her mistress's love and prayers. 
" Had Miss Mowbray no connections ? " was the natural ques- 
tion. " Yes ; one very near — an aunt, the sister of her father, 
richly married in India. But Sir William was a proud and a 
stern man, upright in his own conduct, and implacable to error. 
Lady Ely was a sweet, gentle creature, and doubtless would be 
glad to extend a mother's protection to the orphan; but Sir 



THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMISTRESS 197 

William — oh! he was so unrelenting! He had abjured Mr. 
Mowbray, and all connected with him. She had written to 
inform them where the dear child was, but had no expectation 
of any answer from India." 

Time verified this prediction. The only tidings from India, 
at all interesting to Jane Mowbray, were contained in the para- 
graph of a newspaper which announced Lady Ely's death, and 
put an end to all hopes of protection from that quarter. Years 
passed on, and found her still with Mrs. Allen at Lady Lacy's 
Green, more and more beloved and respected from day to day. 
She had now attained almost to womanhood. Strangers, I 
believe, called her plain ; we, who knew her, thought her pretty. 
Her figure was tall and straight as a cypress, pliant and flex- 
ible as a willow, full of gentle grace, whether in repose or in 
motion. She had a profusion of light brown hair, a pale com- 
plexion, dark gray eyes, a smile of which the character was 
rather sweet than gay, and such a countenance ! no one could 
look at her without wishing her well, or without being sure 
that she deserved all good wishes. 

Her manners were modest and elegant, and she had much 
of the self-taught knowledge which is, of all knowledge, the 
surest and the best, because acquired with most difficulty, and 
fixed in the memory by the repetition of effort. Every one had 
assisted her to the extent of his power and of her willingness 
to accept assistance ; for both she and Mrs. Allen had a pride — 
call it independence — which rendered it impossible, even to the 
friends who were most honored by their good opinion, to be as 
useful to them as they could have wished. To give Miss Mow- 
bray time for improvement had, however, proved a powerful 
emollient to the pride of our dear schoolmistress ; and that time 
had been so well employed that her acquirements were consider- 
able ; whilst in mind and character she was truly admirable ; 
mild, grateful, and affectionate, and imbued with a deep relig- 
ious feeling, which influenced every action and pervaded every 
thought. So gifted, she was deemed by her constant friends, the 
vicar and his lady, perfectly competent to the care and education 



198 MABY RUSSELL MITFOBD 

of children ; it was agreed that she should enter a neighboring 
family, as a successor to their then governess, early in the ensu- 
ing spring; and she, although sad at the prospect of leaving 
her aged protectress, acquiesced in their decision. 

One fine Sunday in the October preceding this dreaded separa- 
tion, as Miss Mowbray, with Mrs. Allen leaning on her arm, was 
slowly following the little train of Lady Lacy's scholars from 
church, an elderly gentleman, sickly-looking and emaciated, 
accosted a pretty young woman, who was loitering with some 
other girls at the church-yard gate, and asked her several ques- 
tions respecting the school and its mistress. Susan Wheeler 
(for it happened to be our old acquaintance) was delighted to 
be singled out by so grand a gentleman, and being a kind- 
hearted creature in the main, spoke of the schoolhouse and its 
inhabitants exactly as they deserved. 

"Mrs. Allen," she said, "was the best woman in the world 
— the very best, except just Miss Mowbray, who was better 
still, — only too particular about summing, which you know, 
sir," added Susan, " people can't learn if they can't. She is 
going to be a governess in the spring," continued the loqua- 
cious damsel ; " and it's to be hoped the little ladies will take 
kindly to their tables, or it will be a sad grievance to Miss 
Jane." — " A governess ! Where can I make inquiries concern- 
ing Miss Mowbray?" — "At the vicarage, sir," answered Susan, 
dropping her little courtesy, and turning away, well pleased 
with the gentleman's condescension, and with half a crown 
which he had given her in return for her intelligence. The 
stranger, meanwhile, walked straight to the vicarage, and in 
less than half an hour the vicar repaired with him to Lady 
Lacy's Green. 

This stranger, so drooping, so sickly, so emaciated, was the 
proud Indian uncle, the stern Sir William Ely ! Sickness and 
death had been busy with him and with his. He had lost his 
health, his wife, and his children ; and softened by affliction, 
was returned to England a new man, anxious to forgive and 
to be forgiven, and, above all, desirous to repair his neglect and 



DB. COURTLY' 8 SCHOOL 199 

injustice towards the only remaining relative of the wife whom 
he had so fondly loved and so tenderly lamented. In this 
frame of mind, such a niece as Jane Mowbray was welcomed 
with no common joy. His delight in her, and his gratitude 
towards her protectress, were unbounded. He wished them both 
to accompany him home, and reside with him constantly. 
Jane promised to do so ; but Mrs. Allen, with her usual admi- 
rable feeling of propriety, clung to the spot which had been to 
her a " city of refuge," and refused to leave it in sj:)ite of all 
the entreaties of uncle and of niece. It was a happy decision 
for Aberleigh ; for what could Aberleigh have done without its 
good schoolmistress ! 

She lives there still, its ornament and its pride ; and every 
year Jane Mowbray comes for a long visit, and makes a holi- 
day in the school and in the whole place. Jane Mowbray, did 
I say ? No ! not Jane Mowbray now. She has changed that 
dear name for the only name that could be dearer — she is 
married — married to the eldest son of Mr. Lacy, the lineal rep- 
resentative of Dame Eleanor Lacy, the honored foundress of 
the school. It was in a voice tremulous more from feeling than 
from age, that Mrs. Allen welcomed the young heir, when he 
brought his fair bride to Aberleigh ; and it was with a yet 
stronger and deeper emotion that the bridegroom, with his own 
Jane in his hand, visited the asylum which she and her vener- 
able guardian owed to the benevolence and the piety of his 
ancestress, whose good deeds had thus showered down blessings 
on her remote posterity. 

Dr. Courtly's School 

(From a charade in " Our Village.") 

A fashionable Morning Room. — Mr. and Mrs. Apperley at break- 
fast. — Mr. Apperley lays down the newspaper 

Mr. App. Mrs. Apperley, my dear, I want to speak to you on 
a subject on which, as a mother, you have every right to be 
consulted ; the more especially as, from your excellent sense, I 



200 MAEY BU88ELL MITFOBD 

have no doubt of your being entirely of my opinion. John 
grows a great boy. 

Mrs. App. Poor fellow! Yes. He'll be ten years old the fif- 
teenth of next month. Time slips away, Mr. Apperley. 

Mr. App. Ten years old next month ! It's high time that he 
should be taken from Mr. Lynn's. These pre|)aratory schools 
are good things for little boys ; but a lad of ten years old re- 
quires to be more tightly kept. 

Mrs. App. Just my opinion, Mr. Apperley. The sooner you 
remove the poor boy from Mr. Lynn's the better. They don't 
take half the care of him that they ought to do. Only yester- 
day, when I called there, I found him playing at cricket without 
his hat — really without his hat ! — in the middle of that wind, 
and so delicate as John is too ! 

Mr. App. Delicate ! Pshaw ! There never was anything the 
matter with the child but your coddling, Mrs. Apperley ; and 
Eton will soon cure him of that. 

Mrs. App. Eton ! Do "you mean to send John to Eton? 

Mr. App. To be sure I do. 

Mrs. App. Our sweet John, our only son, our only child, to Eton? 

Mr. App. Certainly. 

Mrs. App. Never with my consent, I promise you, Mr. 
Apperley. 

Mr. App. And why not, Mrs. Apperley ? 

Mrs. App. Just look at the boys ; that's all. Did not the 
Duchess tell me herself that the poor little Marquis came home 
with only one skirt to his jacket, and his brother Lord Edward 
with scarcely a shoe to his foot ? There's a pretty plight for 
you, Mr. Apperley ! Think of our John with his toes through 
his shoes, and half a skirt to his jacket ! 

Mr. App. Pshaw ! 

Mrs. App. Then such rude graceless pickles as they come 
back, with their manners more out at elbows than their clothes. 

Mr. App. Pshaw ! 

Mrs. App. Then the dangers they run! — to be killed by a 
cricket-ball, or drowned in the Thames, or 



DE. COURTLY' 8 SCHOOL 201 

Mr. App. Pshaw ! Mrs. Apperley. Where now, in your wis- 
dom, would you send the boy ? 

Mrs. App. To Dr. Courtly. 

Mr. App. And pray who is Dr. Courtly ? 

Mrs. App. Did you never hear of Dr. Courtly's establishment 
for young gentlemen? — never hear of Dr. Courtly! — So elegant, 
so comfortable, taken such care of ; linen clean twice a day ; 
hair curled every morning ; almond paste to wash their hands ; 
china dinner-service; silver forks, napkins, and finger-glasses. 
— Just ten miles off, only fourteen pupils, and happens to have 
a vacancy. Pray send John to Dr. Courtly, Mr. Apperley. 

Mr. App. And so make a coxcomb of the boy before his 
time ! Not I, truly. Leave the hair-curling and the almond- 
paste to the instinct of eighteen. In the meanwhile I choose 
that he should learn Latin and Greek ; and for that purpose I 
shall send him to Eton. 

Mrs. App. Lord, Mr. Apperley ! what is a man the better for 
that nonsense? You are an Etonian yourself, and pray tell 
me now what good has your scholarship ever done you ? What 
use have you made of it? 

Mr. App. Hem ! That's a point which ladies can't under- 
stand, and had better not talk about, Mrs. Apperley ! 

Mrs. App. Have you ever, during the eleven years that we 
have been married, read a single page of Greek or Latin, Mr. 
Apperley ? 

Mr. App. Hem ! Why, really, my dear 

Mrs. App. Or indeed a page of anything, except the news- 
papers and the Waverley novels ? 

Mr. App. How can you say so, Mrs. Apperley ! 

Mrs. App. Why, what do you read ? 

Mr. App. Hem! The Quarterly — I generally look over the 
Quarterly ; and Pepys — I dipped into Pepys ; and the maga- 
zines, Mrs. Apperley ! Don't I turn over the magazines as regu- 
larly as the month comes? And, in short, if you could but 
imagine the Attic zest, the classical relish, with which a sound 
scholar but this, as I said before, is what you ladies can't 



202 MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 

understand, and had better not talk about. John shall go to 
Eton ; that's my determination. 

Mrs. App. He shall go to Dr. Courtly's ; that's mine. How 
can you be so barbarous, Mr. Apperley, as to think of sending 
John to such a place as Eton, subject as he is to chilblains, and 
the winter coming on ? Now the Doctor has studied surgery, 
and dresses 

Mr. App. Hang the Doctor, and hang John's chilblains. 
The boy shall go to Eton. — That's my last word, Mrs. Apperley. 

Mrs. App. If he does, he'll be dead in a week. But he shan't 
go to Eton — that's my resolution. And we shall see who'll 
have the last word, Mr. Apperley — we shall see ! 

[Exeunt separately^ 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

1816-1855 

Charlotte Bronte, one of the most original novelists of her time, 
was born at Thornton, in Yorkshire, England, in 1816. When but 
eight years old, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters to a 
boarding-school. Two of her sisters soon died, and Charlotte returned 
to a home that had not many comforts ; for her father was a man of 
eccentric and solitary habits, and withal very poor. But the sisters 
nobly determined to exert all their powers to make themselves and 
their widowed father more comfortable. In 1842, Charlotte and 
Emily went to Brussels, to qualify themselves for teaching foreign 
languages. On their return, they advei'tised that they would receive 
pupils in the parsonage, but none came. 

The three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, then ventured to 
publish a volume of their poems, their names being veiled under those 
of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. This choice of names was dictated, 
as Charlotte writes, by " a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming 
Christian names positively masculine," while they did not like to 
declare themselves wornen. But the volume had little ' success. 
Charlotte's next venture was a prose tale, "The Pi'ofessor," which 
was rejected by the London publishers; but the rejection was sweet- 
ened by the encouragement to try her hand at another book. The 
fruit of this advice was soon beheld in "Jane Eyre" (1847), a work 
of startling interest and power, which at once made the author 
famous. In 1849 she published "Shirley," and in 1852, "Villette," 
— the last work of this woman of genius. In June, 1854, she was 
married to her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls, but died in the following 
March, in her thirty-ninth year. 

Characterization 

The story of the Brontes is one of the saddest in the annals of litera- 
ture. They were the children of a father who was both cold and vio- 
lent, and of a gentle, sickly mother, early lost. They were reared 
amid surroundings the most gloomy and unhealthful, and cursed 
as they grew older with a brother who brought them shame and 
sorrow in return for the love they lavished upon him. Their very 
genius seemed a product of disease, and often their finest pages are 

203 



204 GEAELOTTE BRONTE 

marred with a bitter savor of its origin. In treating such subjects 
these three quiet, patient daughters of a country parson found them- 
selves quite at home. . . . One spring they were all taken sick 
with a complication of measles and whooping-cough, and on their 
recovery, Mr. Bronte thought a change of air desirable for the elder 
ones. In July, 1824, he sent Maria and Elizabeth to a school for cler- 
gymen's daughters, at Cowan's Bridge ; in September they were joined 
by Emily aad Charlotte. To the readers of Charlotte Bronte it would 
be superfluous to describe this school — the " Lowood " of "Jane Eyre." 
Its miserable diet, unhealthy situation, long lessons, rigid discipline, 
low type of religion, and continual sermons u]3on humility — nothing 
is there forgotten, nor is anything exaggerated. Moreover, the de- 
scriptions of both teachers and pupils are most of them portraits.. Miss 
Temple and Miss Scatcherd are drawn from life; and the pathetic 
figure of Helen Burns is a delineation of Maria Bronte, whose death 
from consumption was directly due to the hardships she underwent at 
Cowan's Bridge, James Parton. 

Lowood School 

(From " Jane Eyre ") 

My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit 
record ; I hardly yet knew where I was ; Gateshead and my 
past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance ; the 
present was vague and strange, and of the future I could form 
no conjecture. I looked round the convent-hke garden, and 
then up at the house ; a large building, half of which seemed 
gray and old, the other half quite new. The new pai:t, con- 
taining the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned 
and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect ; a 
stone tablet over the door bore this inscription : 



LowooD 


Institution. 








THIS PORTION WAS REBUILT A 


. D. — 


-, BY NAOMI BROCKLEHURST 


OP BROCKLEHURST 


HALL, 


IN THIS 


COUNTY. 






"Let your light so shine before men, that 


they may 


see 


your 


good works, and glorify your 


Father 


which is 


) in heaven 


j> 








- 


-St. Matt. 


V. 


16. 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 205 

I read these words over and over again ; I felt that an expla- 
nation belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate 
their import. I was still pondering the signification of " Insti- 
tution," and endeavoring to make out a connection between the 
first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a 
cough close behind me made me turn my head. I saw a girl 
sitting on a stone bench near ; she was bent over a book, on the 
perusal of which she seemed intent ; and from where I stood I 
could see the title — it was " Rasselas ; " a name that struck me 
as strange, and consequently attractive. In turning a leaf, she 
happened to look up, and I said to her directly, " Is your book 
interesting ? " I had already formed the intention of asking 
her to lend it to me some day. 

" I like it," she answered, after a pause of a second or two, 
during which she examined me. 

" What is it about ? " I continued. I hardly know where I 
found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stran- 
ger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits; but I 
think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere ; 
for I, too, liked reading, though of a frivolous and childish 
kind ; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or sub- 
stantial. 

" You may look at it," replied the girl, offering me the book. 

I did so ; a brief examination convinced me that the contents 
were less taking than the title : " Rasselas " looked dull to my 
trifling taste ; I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii ; 
no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages. 
I returned it to her ; she received it quietly, and without saying 
anything she was about to relapse into her former studious 
mood ; again I ventured to disturb her : " Can you tell me 
what the writing on that stone over that door means ? What 
is Lowood Institution ? " 

" This house where you are come to live." 

" And why do they call it Institution ? Is it in any way dif- 
ferent from other schools ? " 

" It is partly a charity-school : you and I, and all the rest of 



206^ GEABLOTTE BRONTE 

US, are charity-children. I suppose you are an orphan: are not 
either your father or your mother dead ? " 

" Both died before I can remember." 

" Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, 
and this is called an institution for educating orphans." 

" Do we pay no money ? Do they keep us for nothing ? " 

" We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each." 

" Then why do they call us charity-children ? " 

" Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teach- 
ing, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription." 

" Who subscribes ? " 

" Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this 
neighborhood and in London." 

" Who was Naomi Brocklehurst ? " 

"The lady who built the new part of this house as that 
tablet records, and whose son overlooks and directs everything 
here." 

" Why ? " 

" Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment." 

" Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears 
a watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese." 

" To Miss Temple ? Oh no ! I wish it did ; she has to an- 
swer to Mr. Brocklehurst for all she does. Mr. Brocklehurst 
buys all our food and all our clothes." 

" Does he live here ? " 

" No — two miles off, at a large hall." 

" Is he a good man ? " 

" He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good." 

" Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple ? " 

"Yes." 

" And what are the other teachers called ? " 

" The one with the red cheeks is called Miss Smith ; she 
attends to the work, and cuts out — for we make our own clothes, 
our frocks, and pelisses, and everything; the little one with 
black hair is Miss Scatcherd ; she teaches history and gram- 
mar, and hears the second-class repetitions ; and the one who 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 207 

wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to her side 
with a yellow ribbon, is Madame Pierrot ; she comes from Lisle, 
in France, and teaches French." 

" Do you like the teachers ? " 

" Well enough." 

" Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ? I 

cannot pronounce her name as you do." 

" Miss Scatcherd is hasty — you must take care not to offend 
her ; Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of person." 

" But Miss Temple is the best— isn't she ? " 

" Miss Temple is very good, and very clever ; she is above the 
rest, because she knows far more than they do." 

" Have you been long here ? " 

" Two years." 

" Are you an orphan ? " 

" My mother is dead." 

" Are you happy here ? " 

"You ask rather too many questions. I have given you 
answers enough for the present ; now I want to read." 

But at the moment the summons sounded for dinner; all 
reentered the house. The odor which now filled the refectory 
was scarcely more appetizing than that which had regaled our 
nostrils at breakfast ; the dinner was served in two huge tin- 
plated vessels, whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid 
fat. I found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and 
strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked together. Of 
this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was apportioned 
to each pupil. I ate what I could, and wondered within myself 
whether every day's fare would be like this. 

After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom ; 
lessons recommenced, and were continued till five o'clock. 

The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the 
girl with whom I had conversed in the veranda dismissed in 
disgrace by Miss Scatcherd from a history class, and sent to 
stand in the middle of the large schoolroom. The punishment 
seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so 



208 GHABLOTTE BRONTE 

great a girl — she looked thirteen or upward. I expected she 
would show signs of great distress and shame ; but to my sur- 
prise she neither wept nor bkished : composed, though grave, 
she stood the central mark of all eyes. " How can she bear it 
so quietly — so firmly ? " I asked of myself. " Were I in her 
place, it seems to me that I should wish the earth to open and 
swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of some- 
thing beyond her punishment — beyond her situation : of some- 
thing not round her or before her. I have heard of day- 
dreams — is she in a day-dream now ? Her eyes are fixed on 
the floor, but I am sure they do not see it — her sight seems 
turned in, gone down into her heart : she is looking at what 
she can remember, I believe, not at what is really present. I 
wonder what sort of a girl she is — whether good or naughty ? " 

Soon after five p. m. we had another meal, consisting of a 
small mug of coffee, and half a slice of brown bread. I 
devoured my bread and drank my coffee with relish; but 
I should have been glad of as much more — I was still hungry. 
Half an hour's recreation succeeded, then study ; then the glass 
of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers and bed. Such was 
my first day at Lowood. 

The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing 
by rush light ; but this morning we were obliged to dispense 
with the ceremony of washing: the water in the pitchers was 
frozen. A change had taken place in the weather the preced- 
ing evening, and a keen northeast wind, whistling through the 
crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us 
shiver in our bed, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice. 

Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible reading 
was over, I felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfast-time came 
at last, and this morning the porridge was not burned ; the 
quality was eatable, the quantity small ; how small my portion 
seemed ! I wished it had been doubled. 

In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the 
fourth class, and regular tasks and occupations were assigned 
me ; hitherto I had only been a spectator of the proceedings at 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 209 

Lowood, I was now to become an actor therein. At first, being 
little accustomed to learn by heart, the lessons appeared to me 
both long and difficult: the frequent change from task to task, 
too, bewildered me ; and I was glad when, about three o'clock 
in the afternoon. Miss Smith put into my hands a border of 
muslin two yards long, together with needle, thimble, etc., and 
sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom, with direc- 
tions to hem the same. At that hour most of the others were 
sewing likewise ; but one class still stood round Miss Scatcherd's 
chair reading, and as all was quiet, the subject of their lessons 
could be heard, together with the manner in which each girl 
acquitted herself, and the animadversions or commendations of 
Miss Scatcherd on the performance. It was English history : 
among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the veranda : 
at the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the 
top of the class, but for some error of pronunciation or some 
inattention to stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. 
Even in that obscure position. Miss Scatcherd continued to make 
her an object of constant notice : she was continually address- 
ing to her such phrases as the following : 

" Burns " (such, it seems, was her name : the girls here were 
called by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere), " Burns, you are 
standing on the side of your shoe, turn your toes out immedi- 
ately." " Burns, you poke your chin most unpleasantly ; draw 
it in." " Burns, I insist on your holding your head up ; I will 
not have you before me in that attitude," etc., etc. 

A chapter having been read through twice, the books were 
closed and the girls examined. The lesson had comprised part 
of the reign of Charles I., and there were sundry questions 
about tonnage and poundage and ship-money, which most of 
them appeared unable to answer; still, every little difficulty 
was solved instantly when it reached Burns ; her memory 
seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson, and 
she was ready with answers on every point. I kept expecting 
that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention ; but, instead of 
that, she suddenly called out: 
s. M. — 14 



210 CHARLOTTE BRONT^ 

" You dirty, disagreeable girl ! you have never cleaned your 
nails this morning ! " 

Burns made no answer ; I wondered at her silence. 

" Why," thought I, " does she not explain that she could 
neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was 
frozen? " 

My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me 
to hold a skein of thread : while she was winding it, she talked 
with me from time to time, asking whether I had ever been at 
school before, whether I could mark, stitch, knit, etc. ; till she 
dismissed me, I could not pursue my observations on Miss 
Scatcherd's movements. When^I returned to my seat, that lady 
was just delivering an order, of which I did not catch the 
import ; but Burns immediately left the class, and, going into 
the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in 
half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied 
together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss 
Scatcherd with a respectful courtesy; then she quietly, and 
without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher 
instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with 
the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye ; and while I 
paused from my sewing, -because my fingers quivered at this 
spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, 
not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. 

" Hardened girl ! " exclaimed Miss Scatcherd ; " nothing can 
correct you of your slatternly habits : carry the rod away." 

Burns obeyed : I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from 
the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief 
into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin 
cheek. 

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the 
golden age either : it comprised an irksome struggle with diffi- 
culties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. 
The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the 
physical hardships of my lot ; though these were no trifles. 



LOW OB SCHOOL 211 

During January, February, and part of March, the deep 
snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, 
prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to 
church ; but within these limits we had to pass an hour every 
day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect 
us from the severe cold ; we had no boots ; the snow got into 
our shoes, and melted there; our ungloved hands became 
numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet ; I 
remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this 
cause every evening, when my feet inflamed ; and the torture 
of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the 
morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing. 
With the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely 
sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency 
of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the 
younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an 
opportunity they would coax or menace the little ones out of 
their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claim- 
ants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time ; 
'and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug 
of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompani- 
ment of secret tears forced froln me by the exigency of hunger. 

Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had 
to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron 
officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church colder : during 
the morning service we became almost paralyzed. It was too 
far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and 
bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordi- 
nary meals, was served round between the services. 

At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an 
exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing 
over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the 
skin from our faces. 

I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly 
along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind 
fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by pre- 



212 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

cept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as 
she said, " Hke stalwart soldiers." The other teachers, poor 
things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt 
the task of cheering others. 

How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when 
we got back ! But to the little ones at least, this was denied : 
each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by 
a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger chil- 
dren crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their 
pinafores. 

A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double 
ration of bread — a whole, instead of a half, slice — with the deli- 
cious addition of a thin scrape of butter : it was the hebdom- 
adal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to 
Sabbath. I generally contrived to reserve a moiety of this 
bounteous repast for myself; but the remainder I was invaria- 
bly obliged to part with. 

The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the 
Church Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of 
St. Matthew; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss 
Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A fre- 
quent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the 
part of Eutychus by some half dozen little girls, who, overpow- 
ered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet 
off the foutth form, and be taken up half dead. The remedy 
was, to thrust them forward into the center of the schoolroom, 
and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished.- 
Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank together in a 
heap; they were then propped up with the monitors' high 
stools. 

I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst ; 
and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater 
part of the first month after my arrival ; perhaps prolonging 
his stay with his friend the archdeacon ; his absence was a 
relief to me. I need not say that I had my own reasons for 
dreading his coming : but come he did at last. 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 213 

One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I 
was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzHng over a sum in 
long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, 
caught sight of a figure just passing; I recognized almost 
instinctively that gaunt outline ; and when two minutes after, 
all the school, teachers included, rose en masse, it was not 
necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance 
they thus greeted. A long stride measured the schoolroom, 
and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood 
the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously 
from the hearth-rug at Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at 
this piece of architecture. Yes, I was right ; it was Mr. Brockle- 
liurst, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, 
and more rigid than ever. 

I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition ; 
too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed 
about my disposition, etc. ; the promise pledged by Mr. Brockle- 
hurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious 
nature. All along I had been dreading the fulfillment of this 
promise — I had been looking out daily for the " coming man," 
whose information respecting my past life and conversation 
was to brand me as a bad child forever ; now there he was. He 
stood at Miss Temple's side ; he was speaking low in her ear ; 
I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy ; 
and I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every 
moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance 
and contempt. I listened, too ; and as I happened to be seated 
quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said ; its 
import relieved me from immediate apprehension. 

" I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will 
do ; it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the 
calico chemise, and I sorted the needles to match. You may 
tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the 
darning-needles, but she shall have some papers sent in next 
week, and she is not, on any account, to give out more than one 
at a time to each pupil : if they have more, they are apt to be 



214 GHABLOTTE BRONTE 

careless and lose them. And oh, ma'am ! I wish the woolen 
stockings were better looked to ! — when I was here last, I went 
into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on 
the line ; there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state 
of repair : from the size of the holes in them I was sure they 
had not been well mended from time to time." 

He paused. 

" Your directions shall be attended to, sir," said Miss Temple. 

"And, ma'am," he continued, "the laundress tells me some 
of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week : it is too much ; 
the rules limit them to one." 

" I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and 
Catharine Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends 
at Lowton last Thursday, and I gave them leave' to put on 
clean tuckers for the occasion." 

Mr. Brocklehurst nodded. 

" Well, for once it may pass ; but please not to let the circum- 
stance occur too often. And there is another thing which sur- 
prised me: I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, 
that a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been 
served out to the girls during the past fortnight. How is this ? 
I look over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch 
mentioned. Who introduced this innovation ? and by what 
authority ? " 

" I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir," replied 
Miss Temple : " the breakfast was so ill-prepared that the pupils 
could not possibly eat it ; and I dared not allow them to remain 
fasting till dinner-time." 

" Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan 
in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of 
luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self- 
denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the 
appetite occur, such as tfee spoiling of a meal, the under or the 
over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralized 
by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, 
thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institu- 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 215 

tion ; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the 
pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the tem- 
porary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not 
be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the 
opportunity of referring to the suflPerings of the primitive Chris- 
tians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our 
blessed Lord himself, calling upon his disciples to take up their 
cross and follow him ; to his warnings that man shall not live 
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God ; to his divine consolations, ' If ye suffer hunger 
or thirst for my sake, happy are ye.' Oh, madam, when you 
put bread and cheese, instead of burned porridge, into these 
children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but 
you little think how you starve their immortal souls ! " 

Mr. Brocklehurst again paused — perhaps overcome by his 
feelings. Miss Temple had looked down when he first began 
to speak to her ; but she now gazed straight before her, and her 
face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also 
the coldness and fixity of that material; especially her mouth 
closed as if it would have required a sculptor's chisel to open it, 
and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity. 

Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his 
hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. 
Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that 
either dazzled or shocked its pupil ; turning, he said in more 
rapid accents than he had hitherto used : " Miss Temple, Miss 
Temple, what — what is that girl with curled hair? Red 
hair, ma'am, curled — curled all over ? " And extending his 
cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he 
did so. 

" It is Julia Severn," replied Miss Temple, very quietly. 

" Julia Severn, ma'am ! And why has she, or any other, 
curled hair ? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle 
of this house, does she conform to the world so openly — here in 
an evangelical, charitable establishment — as to wear her hair 
one mass of curls? " 



216 GHABLOTTE BRONTE 

" Julia's nair curls naturally," returned Miss Temple, still 
more quietly. 

" Naturally ! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature : I 
wish these girls to be the children of Grace : and why that 
abundance ? I have again and again intimated that I desire 
the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Tem- 
ple, that girl's hair must be cut off entirely ; I will send a bar- 
ber to-morrow : and I see others who have far too much of the 
excrescence — that tall girl, tell her to turn round. Tell all the 
first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall." 

Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to 
smooth away the involuntary smiles that curled them ; she 
gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in 
what was required of them, they obeyed. Leaning a little back 
on my bench I could see the looks and grimaces with which 
they commented on this maneuver : it was a pity Mr. Brockle- 
hurst could not see them too ; he would perhaps have felt that 
whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, 
the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined. 

He scrutinized the reverse of these Uving medals some five 
minutes, then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the 
knell of doom : " All those top-knots must be cut off." 

Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate. 

" Madam," he pursued, " I have a Master to serve whose 
kingdom is not of this world : my mission is to mortify in these 
girls the lusts of the flesh ; to teach them to clothe themselves 
with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and 
costly apparel ; and each of the young persons before us has a 
string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have 
woven : these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, 
of " 

Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted : three other visitors, 
ladies, now entered the room. They ought to have come a little 
sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splen- 
didly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the 
trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had gray beaver hats, 



LOW OB SCHOOL 217 

then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under 
the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light 
tresses, elaborately curled ; the elder lady was enveloped in a 
costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false 
front of French curls. 

These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as 
Mrs. and the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of 
honor at the top of the room. It seems they had come in the 
carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting 
a rummaging scrutiny of the rooms up-stairs, while he trans- 
acted business with the housekeeper, questioned the laundress, 
and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to ad- 
dress divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was 
charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the 
dormitories ; but I had no time to listen to what they said ; 
other matters called off and enchained my attention. 

Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brockle- 
hurst and Miss Temple, I had not at the same time neglected 
precautions to secure my personal safety ; which I thought would 
be effected, if I could only elude observation. To this end, I 
had sat well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy 
with my sum, had held my slate in such a manner as to con- 
ceal my face : I might have escaped notice, had not my treach- 
erous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and fall- 
ing with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me ; 
I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two 
fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It came. 

" A careless girl ! " said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately 
after — " It is the new pupil, I perceive." And before I could 
draw breath, " I must not forget I have a word to say respect- 
ing her." Then aloud — how loud it seemed to me ! " Let the 
child who broke her slate come forward ! " 

Of my own accord I could not have stirred : I was paralyzed : 
but the two great girls who sat on each side of me set me on 
my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge, and then Miss 
Temple gently assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her 



218 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

whispered counsel, '' Don't be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an acci- 
dent ; you shall not be punished." 

The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger. 

"Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite," 
thought I, and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst 
and Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no 
Helen Burns. 

'' Fetch that stool," said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very 
high one from which a monitor had just risen ; it was brought. 

" Place the child upon it." 

And I was placed there, by whom I don't know — I was in no 
condition to note particulars — I was only aware that they had 
hoisted me up to the height of Mr. Brocklehurst's nose, that he 
was within a yard of me, and that a spread of shot orange and 
purple silk pelisse and a cloud of silvery plumage extended 
and waved below me. 

Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed. 

"Ladies," said he, turning to his family; "Miss Temple, 
teachers, and children, you all see this girl ? " 

Of course they did ; for I felt their eyes directed like burning- 
glasses against my scorched skin. 

" You see she is yet young ; you observe she possesses the 
ordinary form of childhood ; God has graciously given her the 
shape that he has given to all of us; no signal deformity points 
her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil 
One had already found a servant and agent in her ? Yet such, 
I grieve to say, is the case." 

A pause — in which I began to study the palsy of my nerves, 
and feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no 
longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained. 

" My dear children," pursued the black-marble clergyman, 
with pathos, " this is a sad, a melancholy occasion, for it becomes 
my duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's 
own lambs, is a little castaway : not a member of the true flock, 
but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your 
guard against her ; you must shun her example ; if necessary, 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 219 

avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her 
out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her. Keep 
your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinize 
her actions, punish her body to save her soul, if, indeed, such 
salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this 
girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many 
a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels be- 
fore Juggernaut — this girl is — a liar." 

Now came a pause of ten minutes : during which I, by this 
time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female 
Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply 
them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to 
and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, " How shocking ! " 

Mr. Brocklehurst resumed. 

" This I learned from her benefactress ; from the pious and 
charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her 
as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity, the 
unhappj'' girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that 
at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from 
her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious example should 
contaminate their purity. She has sent her here to be healed, 
even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool 
of Bethesda ; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to 
allow the waters to stagnate round her." 

With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the 
top button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, 
who rose, bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people 
sailed in state from the room. Turning at the door, my judge 
said, " Let her stand half an hour longer on that stool, and let 
no one speak to her during the remainder of the day." 

There was I, then, mounted aloft — I, who had said I could 
not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the mid- 
dle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal 
of infamy. What my sensations were," no language can de- 
scribe ; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and con- 
stricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me. In passing, 



220 CHAELOTTE BRONTE 

she lifted her eyes. What a strange Hght inspired them ! 
What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me ! 
How the new feeling bore me up ! It was as if a martyr, a 
hero, had j^assed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the 
transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and 
took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight 
question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the 
triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at 
me as she again went by. What a smile ! I remember it now, 
and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true cour- 
age ; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken 
gray ej^e, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet 
at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm "the untidy 
badge ; " scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by 
Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow, 
because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is 
the imperfect nature of man ! Such spots are there on the disk 
of the clearest planet ; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only 
see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of 
the orb. 

• Ere the half-hour ended five o'clock struck ; school was dis- 
missed, and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ven- 
tured to descend ; it was deep dusk ; I retired into a corner and 
sat down on the floor. The spell by which I had been so far 
supported began to dissolve ; reaction took place, and soon, so 
overwhelming was the grief that seized me, I sank prostrate 
with my face to the ground. Now I wept. Helen Burns was 
not here ; nothing sustained me ; left to myself, I abandoned 
myself, and my tears watered the boards. I had meant to be 
so good, and to do so much at Lowood, to make so many 
friends, to earn respect and win affection. Already I had made 
visible progress ; that very morning I had reached the head of 
my class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly ; Miss Temple had 
smiled approbation ; she had promised to teach me drawing, 
and to let me learn French, if I continued to make similar 
improvement two months longer ; and then I was well received 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 221 

by my fellow-pupils ; treated as an equal by those of my own 
age, and not molested by any; now, here I lay again crushed 
and trodden on ; and could I ever rise more ? 

" Never," I thought ; and ardently I wished to die. While 
sobbing out this wish in broken accents, some one approached ; 
I started up — again Helen Burns was near me ; the fading fires 
just showed her coming up the long, vacant room ; she brought 
my coffee and bread. 

" Come, eat something," she said ; but I put both away from 
me, feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in 
my present condition. Helen regarded me, probably with sur- 
prise. I could not now abate my agitation, though I tried hard ; 
I continued to weep aloud. She sat down on the ground near 
me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her head 
upon them ; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian. 
I was the first who spoke : " Helen, why do you stay with a 
girl whom everybody believes to be a liar ? " 

" Everybody, Jane ? Why, there are only eighty people who 
have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of 
millions." 

" But what have I to do with millions ? The eighty I know 
despise me." 

"Jane, you are mistaken; probably not one in the school 
either despises or dislikes you. Many, I am sure, pity you 
much." 

" How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst said ? " 

" Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god ; nor is he even a great and 
admired man ; he is little liked here ; he never took steps to 
make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favor- 
ite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all 
around you. As it is, the greater number would offer you sym- 
pathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly on 
you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in 
their hearts ; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings 
will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their tem- 
porary suppression. Besides, Jane " she paused. 



222 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

"Well, Helen?" said I, putting my hand into hers. She 
chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on : 

" If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while 
your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from 
guilt, you would not be without friends." 

" No ; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not 
enough ; if others don't love me, I would rather die than live — 
I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here ; to 
gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other 
whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone 
of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind 
a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest " 

" Hush, Jane ! you think too much of the love of human 
beings ; you are too impulsive, too vehement. The sovereign 
Hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided 
you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures 
feebler than you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of 
men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits. That 
world is round us, for it is everywhere ; and those spirits watch 
us, for they are commissioned to guard us ; and if we were 
dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and 
hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognize our inno- 
cence (if innocent we be, as I know you are of this charge 
which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at 
second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in 
your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only 
the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full 
reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with 
distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an 
entrance to happiness — to glory ? " 

I was silent. Helen had calmed me ; but in the tranquillity 
she imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I 
felt the impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell 
whence it came ; and when, having done speaking, she breathed 
a little fast and coughed a short cough, I momentarily forgot 
my own sorrows, to yield to a vague concern for her. 



LOWOOD 8GB00L 223 

Resting my head on Helen's shoulder, I put my arms round 
her waist ; she drew me to her and we reposed in silence. We 
had not sat long thus when another person came in. Some 
heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a rising wind, had left the 
moon bare; and her light, streaming in through a window 
near, shone full both on us and on the approaching figure, which 
we at once recognized as Miss Temple. 

" I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre," said she ; " I 
want you in my room ; and as Helen Burns is with you, she 
may come too." 

We went ; following the superintendent's guidance, we had 
to thread some intricate passages, and mount a staircase before 
we reached her apartment ; it contained a good fire, and looked 
cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low 
arm-chair on one side of the hearth, and herself taking another, 
she called me to her side. 

" Is it all over ? " she asked, looking down at my face. " Have 
you cried your grief away ? " 

" I am afraid I never shall do that." 

"Why?" 

" Because I have been wrongly accused ; and you, ma'am, 
and everybody else will now think me wicked." 

" We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. 
Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy me." 

" Shall I, Miss Temple ? " 

"You will," said she, passing her arm round me. "And 
now tell me who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called 
your benefactress ? " 

" Mrs. Reed, my uncle's wife. My uncle is dead, and he left 
me to her care." 

" Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord ? " 

" No, ma'am ; she was sorry to have to do it ; but my uncle, 
as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise 
before he died that she would always keep me." 

" Well, now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that 
when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his 



224 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

own defense. You have been charged with falsehood ; defend 
yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory 
suggests as true ; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing." 

I resolved in the depth of my heart that I would be most 
moderate — most correct ; and, having reflected a few minutes 
in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all 
the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my 
language was more subdued than it generally was when it 
developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen's warnings 
against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narra- 
tive far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus re- 
strained and simplified, it sounded more credible. I felt as I 
went on that Miss Temple fully believed me. 

In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as hav- 
ing come to see me after the fit ; for I never forgot the, to me, 
frightful episode of the red-room ; in detailing which, my ex- 
citement was sure, in some degree, to break bounds; for noth- 
ing could soften in my recollection the spasm of agony which 
clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed spurned my wild supplica- 
tion for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark and 
haunted chamber. 

I had finished. Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in 
silence; she then said: "I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I 
shall write to him ; if his reply agrees with your statement, you 
shall be publicly cleared from every imputation. To me, Jane, 
you are clear now." 

She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was 
well contented to stand, for I derived a child's pleasure from 
the contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two orna- 
ments, her white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and 
beaming dark eyes), she proceeded to address Helen Burns. 

" How are you to-night, Helen ? Have you coughed much 
to-day ? " 

" Not quite so much, I think, ma'am." 

"And the pain in your chest?" 

" It is a little better." 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 225 

Miss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; 
then she returned to her own seat. As she resumed it, I heard 
her sigh low. She was pensive a few minutes, then rousing 
herself, she said cheerfully, " But you two are my visitors to- 
night ; I must treat you as such." She rang her bell. 

" Barbara," she said to the servant who answered it, "I have 
not yet had tea ; bring the tray, and place cups for these two 
young ladies." 

And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did 
the china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little 
round table near the fire ! How fragrant was the steam of the 
beverage, and the scent of the toast! of which, however, I, to 
my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry), discerned only 
a very small portion. Miss Temple discerned it too. " Bar- 
bara," said she, " can you not bring a little more bread and 
butter ? There is not enough for three." 

Barbara went out ; she returned soon. " Madam, Mrs. Har- 
den says she has sent up the usual quantity." 

Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper — a woman 
after Mr. Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of 
whalebone and iron. 

" Oh, very well ! " returned Miss Temple ; " we must make 
it do, Barbara, I suppose." And as the girl withdrew, she 
added, smiling, " Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply 
deficiencies for this once." 

Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and 
placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but 
thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking 
from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our 
eyes a good-sized seed-cake. 

" I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you," 
said she ; " but as there is so little toast, you must have it now," 
and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand. 

We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia ; and 
not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of 
gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied 
s. M. — 15 



226 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally sup- 
plied. Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned 
us to the fire. We sat one on each side of her ; and now a con- 
versation followed between her and Helen which it was indeed 
a privilege to be admitted to hear. 

Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, 
of state in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, 
which precluded deviation into the ardent, the excited, the 
eager — something which chastened the pleasure of those who 
looked on her and listened to her, by a controlling sense of 
awe ; and such was my feeling now ; but as to Helen Burns, 
I was struck with wonder. 

The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kind- 
ness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, 
something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers 
within her. They woke, they kindled. First, they glowed in 
the bright tint of her cheek, which till this hour I had never 
seen but pale and bloodless ; then they shonie in the liquid 
luster of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty more 
singular than that of Miss Temple's — a beauty neither of fine 
color nor long eyelashes, nor penciled brow, but of meaning, of 
movement, of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips, and 
language flowed, from what source I cannot tell. Has a girl 
of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough, to hold the 
swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence ? Such was the 
characteristic of Helen's discourse on that, to me, memorable 
evening; her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very 
brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence. 

They conversed of things I had never heard of — of nations 
and times past ; of countries far away ; of secrets of nature dis- 
covered or guessed at. They spoke of books. How many they 
had read ! What stores of knowledge they possessed ! Then 
they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors; 
but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked 
Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin 
her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 227 

her read and construe a page of " Virgil ; " and Helen obeyed, 
my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She 
had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime. No 
delay could be admitted ; Miss Temple embraced us both say- 
ing, as she drew us to her heart, " God bless you, my children ! " 

Helen she held a little longer than me ; she let her go more 
reluctantly ; it was Helen her eye followed to the door ; it was 
for her she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she 
wiped a tear from her cheek. 

On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss 
Scatcherd. She was examining drawers; she had just pulled 
out Helen Burns', and when we entered, Helen was greeted 
with a sharp reprimand, and told that to-morrow she should 
have half a dozen of untidily-folded articles pinned to her 
shoulder. 

" My things were indeed in shameful disorder," murmured 
Helen to me, in a *low voice : " I intended to have arranged 
them, but I forgot." 

Next morning Miss Scatcherd wrote, in conspicuous charac- 
ters on a piece of pasteboard, the word " Slattern," and bound 
it like a phylacter}"- round Helen's large, mild, intelligent, and 
benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, 
unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment. 

But the privations, or rather the hardships of Lowood less- 
ened. Spring drew on ; she was indeed already come ; the 
frosts of winter had ceased ; its snows were melted, its cutting 
winds ameliorated. My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to 
lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and sub- 
side under the gentler breathings of April ; the nights and 
mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the 
very blood in our veins ; we could now endure the play -hour 
passed in the garden ; sometimes on a sunny day it began even 
to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those 
brown beds which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that 
Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter 



228 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out among the leaves — 
snowdrops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies. 
On Thursday afternoons (half holidays) we now took walks, and 
found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the 
hedges. 

That forest dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and 
fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening 
spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through 
its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, 
transformed the seminary into a hospital. 

Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most 
of the pupils to receive infection ; forty-five out of the eighty 
girls lay ill at one time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. 
The few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited 
license, because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity 
of frequent exercise to keep them in health ; and had it been 
otherwise, no one had leisure to watch or restrain them. Miss 
Temple's whole attention was absorbed by the patients. She 
lived in the sick-room, never quitting it except to snatch a few 
hours' rest at night. The teachers were fully occupied with 
packing up and making other necessary preparations for the 
departure of those girls who were fortunate enough to have 
friends and relations able and willing to remove them from the 
seat of contagion. Many already smitten went home only to 
die. Some died at the school and were buried quietly and 
quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay. 

While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, 
and death its frequent visitor ; while there was gloom and fear 
within its walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with 
hospital smells, the drug and the pastil striving vainly to over- 
come the effluvia of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded 
over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its 
garden, too, glowed with flowers ; hollyhocks had sprung up 
tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom ; 
the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and 



LOWOOD SCHOOL 229 

crimson double-daisies ; the sweetbriers gave out, morning and 
evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant 
treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, 
except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms 
to put in a coffin. 

But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the 
beauties of the scene and season. They let us ramble in the 
wood like gypsies, from morning till night. We did what we 
liked, went where we liked. We lived better too. Mr. Brockle- 
hurst and his family never came near Lowood now ; household 
matters were not scrutinized into ; the cross housekeeper was 
gone, driven away by the fear of infection ; her successor, who 
had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the ways 
of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality. Be- 
sides, there were fewer to feed ; the sick could eat little ; our 
breakfast-basins were better filled. When there was no time to 
prepare a regular dinner, which often happened, she would 
give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and 
cheese, and this we carried away with us to the wood, where 
we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined sumptuously. 



DAVID PERKINS PAGE 

1810-1848 

David Perkins Page was born at Epping, New Hampshire, in 1810. 
He was the son of a prosperous New England farmer, and passed his 
youth in his native village, where he was enrolled as a pupil in the 
public school. At the age of sixteen years he entered Hampton Acad- 
emy, where he prepared himself for the pi'ofession of teaghing. After 
an experience of two years as teacher of a private school at Newbury, 
he was chosen associate principal of the Newburyport High School, in 
which position he served for twelve years. In 1844 he was chosen to 
be pi^esident of the State Normal School of New York, at Albany. 
The appointment was made at the suggestion of Horace Mann. The 
Normal School was new, and was deemed an experiment. Mr. Page's 
administration of the institution was marvelously successful, and 
exerted a wide influence in favor of professional schools for the train- 
ing of teachers. Mr. Page was a very busy man. He wrote much, 
in a fragmentary way, and delivered addresses of great power, some 
of which were published and extensively circulated. Doubtless he 
had formed plans for systematic authorship. He had completed but 
one book, "The Theory and Practice of Teaching," when he died, 
suddenly, in 1848, at the height of his usefulness. 

"Never," says one, " was a career of brilliant promise more abruptly 
terminated. With him died his ambitious plans of authorship, of or- 
ganization, of far-reaching personal influence. And yet, in view of 
the sequel, one is tempted to ask, what more could he have achieved 
had he lived ? Everywhere in the United States the schoolroom tells 
of Page. The pioneer in American pedagogical literature, he is now 
the patriarch, as he speaks through his writings." Of the remarkable 
interest manifested in Page's book in recent years the same writer says : 
"In this present Page revival, much intei'est has been manifested in 
all that pertains to that gifted teacher. His portrait has been sought 
in old paintings, engravings, and daguerreotypes. It is no disappoint- 
ment. The features of Pestalozzi are pinched and wan. The face of 
Page is youthful, strong, and healthy. Anecdotes relating to the man 
— which linger in the legends of Newburyport and Albany ; his motto, 
' Succeed or die ' (both of which he did) ; glimpses of his mode of life 

230 



CEABACTEBIZATION 231 

and thougtit, which we obtain from his writings (for he unconsciously 
mirrored himself aS in a looking-glass) ; the old dialogues which he used 
to write for his school exhibitions, and which are to be found, now 
and then, in old books, and are keenly significant in their purport — all 
these the teachers are thinking about and writing about, as interesting 
souvenirs of the remarkable man now bi'ought so prominently before 
them." 

Characterization 

Mr. Page's powers as an orator and debater were of a very high 
order. " He possessed," says Mr. Mann (himself an orator of no mean 
powers), "that rare quality, so indispensable* to an orator, the power 
to think, standing on his feet and before folks." As a teacher, he 
exhibited two -valuable qualifications, the ability to turn the attention 
of his pupils to the principles which explain facts, and in such a way 
that they could see clearly the connection ; and the talent for reading 
the character of his pupils so accurately that he could at once discern 
what were their governing passions and tendencies, what in them 
needed encouragement, and what repression. His familiar lectures to 
his pupils on subjects connected with the teacher's life and duties, 
could they be published, would form an invaluable handbook for 
teachers. He possessed, beyond most men, the happy talent of always 
saying the right thing at the right time. 

Barnard's "Journal of Education." 

Page is one of the people. He is himself a teacher, who has filled 
the various places teachers are called upon, to occupy in the public 
schools. He conies to them in a plain and matter-of-fact way, realiz- 
ing all the conditions, the needs, the aims and purposes, the duties and 
cares pertaining to the teacher's work. And thus he becomes the per- 
sonal adviser — the Mentor — of those who, perhaps more than any 
others in any community, feel the need of a personal adviser and 
Mentor. "Indiana School Journal." 

Page's dialogue, "The Schoolmaster," which was hastily written for 
a school entertainment at Newburyport, is valued chiefly as an inter- 
esting souvenir of its author— in fact, his portrait, unconsciously self- 
drawn. Some of its administrative features give it to-day a touch of 
archaism ; and it must be remembered that the dialogue belongs to a 
day when teachers mended pens, and "set" copies, and kept "cow- 
hides " in constant use. It is, however, a strong presentation of the 
true teacher — his earnestness, his solicitude for the school, his self-con- 
trol, and manly strength of character. 



232 DAVID PERKINS PAGE 

The Schoolmaster 

(A Dialogue) 
Dramatis Persons 



The Schoolmaster, 
Squire Snyder, 
Mr. Fosdick, 
Mr. O'Clary, 
Mr. Le Compte, 
Jonas Snyder, 
William Fosdick, 
Patrick O'Clary, 
Jacques Le Compte, 
Isaac, 
and others. 



Patrons of the school. 



Pupils of the school. 



Scene. — Interior of a Village Schoolroom. — The Schoolmaster alone. 

Master. {Setting copies) Well, so here I am again, after 
another night's sleep. But, sleep or no sleep, I feel about as 
much fatigued in the morning as I do at night. It is impos- 
sible to get the cares and anxieties of my profession out of my 
mind. It does seem to me that the parents of some of my 
pupils are very unfeeling ; for I know I have done my very 
best to keep a good school, and, however I may have failed 
in some instances, I have the satisfaction of feeling, in my con- 
science, that my best endeavors have been devoted to my work. 
A merry lot of copies here, to be set before schooltime. {Looking 
at his watch.) But " a diligent hand will accomplish much ; " — 
by the way, that will do for a copy for Jonas Snyder — little cul- 
prit ! he was very idle yesterday. — ( Thinking and busy.) What 
can that story mean, which Mr, Truetell told me this morning? 
Five or six ! — who could they be ? — five or six of the parents 
of my scholars dreadfully offended ! Let me see ; what have I 
done ? Nothing, very lately, that I recollect. Let's see ; — yes- 
terday ? no, there was nothing yesterday, except that I detained 
the class in geography till they got their lessons. • Oh, yes, Jonas 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 233 

Snyder was punished for idleness. But I spoke to him four or 
five times, and he would do nothing but whisper, and whittle 
his bench ; and when at last he half eat up an apple, and threw 
the rest at Jacob Readslow, I thought he deserved it. Let's see ; 
I gave him six claps — three on each hand ; — well, he did not 
get more than his deserts. {Enter one of the scholars, with his 
books under his arm, walhing slowly, and eyeing the Master, to his 
seat. Master still busy, and thinking, by and by says,) Isaac, you 
may come to me. 

{He loalks along and says,) Sir ! 

Master. Do you remember {placing his pen over his ear, and 
turning earnestly and portentously round) whether I punished any 
scholars yesterday ? 

Isaac. Yes, sir; you feruled Jone Snyder, for playing and 
laughing. 

Master. Did I punish any one else? 

Isaac. Not as I recollect. 

Master. Think, Isaac ; think carefully. 

Isaac. You kept a lot of us after school, for not saying our 
lessons 

Master. {Quickly.) You mean, Isaac, rather, I kept you to 
get your lessons, which you had neglected ? 

Isaac. Yes, sir; and you made Patrick O'Clary stop and 
sweep, because he stayed out too late after recess. 

Master. Oh, yes ! I remember that. 

Isaac. He was as mad as a hop about it ; he said he meant 
to tell his mother that you made him sweep for nothing. 

Master. Hush ! hush ! You shouldn't tell tales ! Do you 
remember any other punishments ? 

Isaac. No, sir ; not yesterday. You hit Jake Le Compte a 
clip across the knuckles, with the cowskin, day before yester- 
day; — don't you remember? — just as he stretched out his hand 
to hook that old rag upon Tom Willis' collar, you came along 
behind him, and clip went the old whip, right across his fingers, 
and down went the old rag. There, I never was more glad to 
see anything in my life ! Little dirty, mean fellow ! — he's always 



234 DAVIB PERKINS PAGE 

sticking things upon fellows ; — I saw him once pin an old dirty 
rag upon a man's coat, just as he was putting a letter into the 
post-office ; — I never saw such a fellow ! 

{The other boys coming in gradually, the Master rings his little 
bell, and says,) Boys, come to order and take your books. Now, 
boys, I wish to see if we can't have a good school to-day. Let's 
see ; are we all here ? 

Boys. No, sir ! No, sir ! 

Master. Who is absent ? 

Boys. Jone Snyder ! Jake Le Compte ! Patrick O'Clary ! 
and 

Master. Speak one at a time, my boys. Don't make con- 
fusion, to begin with ; — and (looking around them,) — oh ! Will 
Fosdick, — only four ! 

One of the Boys. Pat O'Clary is late. I saw him down in 
Baker Street, poking along ! — he always comes late 

Master. Did he say he was coming ? 

Same Boy. I asked him if he was coming to school, and he 
shook his head, and muttered out something about his mother, 
and I ran along and left him. 

Master. Well, boys ; now let us try to have a still school and 
close study to-day, and see if it is not more pleasant to learn 
than to play. (Rises and walks to and fro on the stage.) Take 
the geography lesson, James and Samuel, first thing this morn- 
ing ; and Isaac, I don't wish to detain you again to-day. (Loud 
knock at the door.) 

(Enter William Fosdick, walking consequentially up to the Mas- 
ter, saying,) Here ! father wants to see you at the door ! 

(Master turns to go to the door, followed by William, ivho 
wishes to hear all that's said, and Mr. Fosdick, looking quite 
savage, steps right inside, — the Master politely bowing, with a " good- 
morning.") 

Mr. Fosdick. Here, sir ; I want to see you about my boy ! 
I don't like to have you keep him after school every day ; I want 
him at home, — and I should like to have you dismiss him when 
school is done. If he wants lickin', lick him — that's all ; but 



TSE SCHOOLMASTER 285 

don't you keep him here an hour or two every day after school, 
— I don't send him here for that ! 

Master. But, my good sir, I have not often detained him ; 
not more than twice within a fort 

Mr. Fosdick. Well, don't you do it again, — that's all ! 

Master. But, sir, I have only detained him to learn the 
lessons which he might learn in school ; and surely, if 

Mr. Fosdick. Well, well, sir ! don't you do it again ! — that's 
all I have to say ! If he behaves bad, you lick him, — only do 
it in reason ; — but when school is done, I want him dismissed ! 

Master. Sir, I do what I conceive to be my duty ; and I 
serve all my scholars alike ; and while I would be willing to 
accommodate you, I shall do what I think is my duty. ( Gather- 
ing spirit and gravity, and advancing.) Sir, do I understand you 
to wish me to whip your son for not getting his lesson ? 

Mr. Fosdick. Yes — no — yes — in reason; I don't want my 
children's bones broke ! 

Master. {Taking from the desk a cowhide) Do you prefer 
your son should be whipped to being detained ? 

Fosdick. I don't think not getting his lessons is such a dread- 
ful crime. I never used to get my lessons, and old Master Pep- 
permint never used to lick me, and I am sure he never kept me 
after school ; but we used to have schools good for sumfin in 
them days. Bill, go to your seat, and behave yourself! and 
when school is done, you come home! That's all I have to 
say ! 

Master. But stop, my boy ! {Speaking to William, decidfedly.) 
There happen to be two sides to this question ! There is some- 
thing further to be said, before you go to your seat in this school. 

Fosdick. What ! you don't mean to turn him out of school, 
do ye? {Somebody knocks.) 

(A boy steps to the door, and in steps Mr. 0' Clary, ivho, approach- 
ing Mr. Fosdick, says,) Is it you that's the schoolmaster, sure? 
It's I that's after spaking to the schoolmaster. {Bowing.) 

Fosdick. No ; I'm no schoolmaster. 

Master. What is your wish, sir ? 



236 DAVID PERKINS PAGE 

Mr. O'Clary. I wants to spake with the schoolmaster, I do, 
sir. (Bows.) 

Master. Well, sir {rapping to keep the boys still, who are dis- 
posed to laugh,) I am the schoolmaster. What is your wish? 

Mr. O'C. Why, sir, my little spalpeen of a son goes to this 
school, he does ; and he says he's made to swape every day, he 
is ; and it's all for nothing, he tells me ; and sure I don't like 
it, I don't ; and I'm kim to complain to ye, I have ! It's Pat- 
rick O'Clary that I'm spaking uv ; and it's I that's his father, 
I be ; his father, Paddy O'Clary from Cork, it is. 

Master. Well, sir, he has never swept but once, I believe ; 
and that, surely, was not without a good reason. 

Mr. O'C. But himself tills a different story, he does ; and I 
niver knew him till but one lie in my life, I didn't ; and that 
was as good as none. But the little spalpeen shall be after till- 
ing his own stowry, he shall! for it's he that's waiting in the 
entry, and will till ye no lie, at all, at all — upon that ye may 
depind ! though it's his father that says it, and sure ! — ( Calls.) 
— Patrick ! Patrick ! ! Patrick ! ! ! My dear, here's your father 
wants ye to come in, and till Master how it's you that's kept 
to swape ivry day, and it's all for nothing, it is ! Come in, I 
say, in a jiffy ! (Patrick, scratching his head, enters.) Here's your 
father, dear ! now till your master, — and till the truth — didn't 
ye till your mither that ye had to swape ivry day for nothing ; 
and it's jou that's going to be kept swaping ivry day, for a 
month to come, and sure ? 

Master. Now tell the truth, Patrick. 

Patrick. (Looking at his father.) No ; I niver said no such 
words, and sure ! I said how I's kept to swape yisterday, for 
staying out too late ; and that's all I said 'bout it, at all, at all. 

Mr. O'C. " Cush la macree ! " Little sonny, how you talk ! 
He's frightened, he is, and sure! (Turning to Mr. Fosdick.) 
He's always bashful before company, he is. But, Master, 
it's I that don't like to have him made to swape the school, 
indade, and 'if you can do nothing else, I shall be in sad taking, 
I shall, and sure ! If you should be after bating him, I should 



TEE SCHOOLMASTER 237 

make no complaint ; for I bates him myself, wheniver he lies 
to his mither — a little spalpeen that he is ! But I can't bear to 
have him made to do the humbling work of swaping, at all, at 
all ; and it's I that shall make a " clish ma claver," an' it's not 
stopped — indade I shall ! {Somebody knocks.) 

{Isaac steps to the door, and returning says,) Esq. Snyder wishes 
to see you, sir. 

Master. {Smiling.) Well, ask Mr. Snyder to step in; — we 
may as well have a regular court of it ! 

{Isaac waits upon him in, leading Jonas, with his hands poulticed) 

Master. {Smiling.) Good-morning, Mr. Snyder ; walk in, sir ! 

Mr. Snyder. {Rather gentlemanly.) I hope you will excuse 
my interrupting your school ; but I called to inquire what 
Jonas, here, could have done, that you bruised him up at such 
a" rate. Poor little fellow ! he came home, taking on as if his 
heart would break ! and both his hands swelled up bigger than 
mine ! and he said you had been beating him, for nothing ! I 
thought I'd come up and inquire into it ; for I don't hold to 
this banging and abusing children, and especially when they 
haven't done anything ; though I'm a friend to good order. 

Master. I was not aware that I punished him very severely, 
sir. 

Mr. Snyder. Oh ! It was dreadfully severe ! Why, the poor 
little fellow's hands pained him so that his mother had to 
poultice them, and sit up with him all night ! and this morning 
she wanted to come up to school with him herself; but I told 
her I guessed she better let me come. — Jonas, do your hands 
ache now, dear? 

Jonas. {Holding them both out together.) Oh ! dreadfully ! 
They feel as if they were in the fire ! 

Mr. Snyder. Well, dear, keep composed ; don't cry, dear. 
Now, sir, {addressing the Master,) this was all for nothing ! 

Master. No, sir ! It was for something, I am thinking ! 

Jonas. I say I did not do nothing ! so there now ! {Somebody 
knocks.) 

Master. Gentlemen, sit down. {Looking perplexed.) Sit 



238 DAVID DEBKINS PAGE 

down, sir. Give me a little time, and I'll endeavor to set the 
matter right. {All sitting down hut the boys.) 

Mr. Snyder. Why, I don't wish to make a serious matter of 
it. I shan't prosecute you. I was only going to ask if you 
couldn't devise some other kind of punishment than pommel- 
ing. If you'd made him stop after school, or set him to sweep- 
ing the house, or scouring the benches, or even whipped him 
with a cowhide or switch-stick, I should not have complained; 
but I don't like this beating boys ! (Knocking again.) 

Master. Isaac, go and see who is at the door. 

(Exit Isaac ; enter Mr. Le Compte and Jacques.) 

Mr. Le Compte. Ha ! Monsieur Tutor. I have one ver leetle 
complainte to make against your — vot you call him — your 
discipleen. 

Master. Ah ! indeed, and what is that, sir ? 

Mr. Le Compte. Why mys boy have not dse right in-cli-na- 
tshon for dse shastisement vot you give him. 

Master. Very likely, sir. Very few boys have an inclina- 
tion for a chastisement. 

Mr. Le Compte. You see. Monsieur, de — vot you call his 
name — de furule vot you use on him wizout ceremume, is for 
certainment not so good for my boy as a leetle parswashon 
would be. 

Master. But, sir, I cannot spend time in persuading boys to 
do right. I find it necessary to make them afraid to do wrong ; 
and as your son is so full of mischievous pranks, I find that I 
only can restrain him by a free use of proper punishment. 

Mr. Le Compte. I has not seen de mischeeve in him vot you 
speak of. He is von (scratches his head to think of the word) — 
von — vot you call a man vot has not drank dse wine ? 

Master. Sober, I suppose you mean. 

Mr. Le Compte. Ah, dat's ze word — von ver sobar boy, and 
zerefore does not deserve de cas-ti-ga-tshon vot you gives him 
for mischeeve. (Jacques pins an old rag upon the father's coat and 
steps back and laughs. The other boys point to the Frenchman and 
laugh.) 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 239 

Mr. Fosdick. Mr. Le Compte, what's that you have pinned 
to your coat? 

Mr. Le Compte. Onmecoat? vere? {Looks round) On de tail 
of my coat, von ver bad boy pinned him dere. Who vas it ? 

Fosdick. Your hopeful son, Jacques. 

Mr. Le Compte. Jacques, you be von grand leetle scoundrel 
and deserve all the shastisement vot the tutor gives you. {To 
the Master) If you will lend me de instrument vot you shastise 
with, I'll teach him to have respect for his father. 

Master. Be calm, sir ; be calm, sir. Be good enough to sit 
down and I'll endeavor to define my position. And now, gentle- 
men, (bowing) I think we may each of us begin to see the 
beauty of variety, especially in the matter of opinion. That 
you may all understand the whole case, I will state in a few 
words the facts, as they actually occurred. Day before j^ester- 
day, our young friend Jacques {pointing to him) was playing his 
favorite trick of hanging his rag signal upon a schoolmate, 
after the fashion in which he has here so filially served his 
father within a few minutes; and standing near him at the 
time, with my whip in hand, I could not resist the tempta- 
tion to salute his mischievous knuckles with a well-directed 
stroke, which, however effectually it may have cut his own 
fingers and his father's sensibilities, it seems has not cut off his 
ruling propensity. Yesterday was emphatically a day of sin- 
ning on my part. Jonas Snyder, whose little hands have 
swelled to such enormous magnitude, was often reproved for 
constant idleness ; and after all this, when he threw a portion of 
an apple at a more industrious boy, thus disturbing many of 
those well-disposed boys, he was called and feruled, receiving 
six strokes — three on each hand — with the rule I now show you. 
Little Patrick O'Clary was required to sweep the schoolroom 
floor, for a strong instance of tardiness at recess ; and this pun- 
ishment was given, because I did not wish to inflict a severer 
one upon so small a lad. And last, this little fellow {pointing to 
William Fosdick) was detained, in common with seven others, 
to learn a lesson which he neglected to learn at the proper time. 



240 DAVID PERKINS PAGE 

Such are the facts. And yet each of you has assured me that 
I have incurred your displeasure by using a punishment you 
disapprove, and " all for nothing." You have each one taken 
the trouble to come to this room, to render my task — already 
sufficiently perplexing — still more so, by giving parental sup- 
port to childish complaints, and imparting your censure, in . no 
measured terms, upon the instructor of your children. But 
this is a most interesting case. You all happen to be here 
together, and you thus give me the opportunity I have long 
wished to show you your own inconsistencies. 

It is easy to comj^lain of your teacher ; but perhaps either 
of you, in your wisdom, would find itr not quite so easy to take 
my place and escape censure. How would either of you have 
got along in the present instance? Mr. Fosdick, who is dis- 
pleased with detention after school, would have, according to 
his own recommendation, resorted to " licking," either with 
ferule or whij^. In this case, he would have incurred the 
censure of his friends, Esq. Snyder and Mr. Le Compte. The 
" squire," in turn, would have raised the displeasure of both his 
friends, by resorting to his favorite mode of detaining and cow- 
hiding. Mr. O'Clar}'- would give the " spalpeens " a " bating," 
as he says, after his own peculiar fashion, with which the squire 
and Mr. Le ComjDte could not have been over-much pleased; — 
and Mr. Le Compte — ay, Mr. Le Compte — if we may judge 
from the exhibition he has just given us, would have displeased 
even himself, by proving to be what he most of all things 
detests — a champion of the cowhide. But what is a little 
curious, as it appears, is, that while I have not carried out the 
favorite scheme of either one of you, — which we have already 
seen, would be objectionable to each of the others, — but have 
adopted a variety of punishments, and the very variety which 
your own collective suffrage would fix uj^on, I have got myself 
equally deep into hot water ; and the grand question is now, 
what shall I do? If I take the course suggested by you collect- 
ively, the result is the same. I see no other way but to take 
my own course, performing conscientiously my duties, in their 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 241 

time and after their manner, and then to demand of you, and 
all others, the right of being sustained ! 

Mr. Snyder. Well, gentlemen, my opinion is, that we have 
been tried and condemned by our own testimony, and there is 
no appeal. My judgment approves the master ; and hereafter I 
shall neither hear nor make any more complaints. Jonas, (turn- 
ing to Jo7ias,) my son, if the master is willing, you may go home 
and tell your mother to take off those poultices, and then do 
you come to school and do as you are told ; and if I hear of 
any more of your complaints, I will double the dose you may 
receive at school. 

Mr. O'C. And sure. Master, Paddy O'Clary is not the man to 
resist authority in the new country ; and bless your sowl, if 
you'll make my little spalpeen but a good boy, it's I that will 
kindly remember the favor, though ye make him swape until 
nixt Christmas ! Here, Patrick, down upon the little knees of 
your own, and crave the master's forgiveness. 

Master. No, sir; that I shall not allow. I ask no one to 
kneel to me. I shall only require that he correct his past 
faults, and obey me in future. 

Mr. O'C. It's an ungrateful child he would be, if ever again 
he should be after troubling so kind a master. St. Patrick 
bless ye ! [Taking little Pat by the hand, they go out.) 

Mr. Fosdick. (Taking the Master by the hand, pleasantly.) Sir, 
I hope I shall profit by this day's lesson. I have only to say, 
that I am perfectly satisfied we are all wrong ; and that is, per- 
haps, the best assurance I can give you, that I think you are 
right. That's all I have to say. (Exeunt?) 

S. M.— 16 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

18 11-1863 

William Makepeace Thackeray, one of the greatest of modern 
novelists, was born at Calcutta, India, in 1811, and was the son of an 
English government official. He was educated in England, at the 
Charter House School, in London, and at Cambridge, though he did 
not take a degree at the University. For some years he traveled in 
Europe, and made a study of art, intending to he a painter. Investing 
his fortune in a newspaper enterprise, he lost heavily, and then turned 
his attention to literature for a support. In 1846 he published the first 
number of " Vanity Fair," which became popular at once. This was 
followed by " Pen dennis," "Esmond," " The Newcomes," and "The 
Virginians." From 1860 to 1862, Thackeray was editor of the Cornhill 
Magazine. Thackeray was a pleasing lecturer, an able critic, and a 
favorite in the social world. He died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 1863. 

"He went out Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He 
went to his room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit 
with him. He hated to make others suffer. He was heard moaning, 
as if in pain, about twelve on the eve of Christmas morning. Then 
all was quiet, and then he must have died — in a moment. Next morn- 
ing his man went in and, opening the windows, found his master dead, 
his arms behind his head, as if he had tried to take one more breath. 
We think of him as of our Chalmers, found dead in like manner ; the 
same childlike, unspoiled, open face ; the same gentle mouth ; the 
same spaciousness and softness of nature ; the same look of power. 
What a thing to think of — alone in the dark, in the midst of his own 
mighty London ; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it may be, 
dreaming of his goodness. God help them and us all." 

John Brown. 

Characterization 

It was hy "Vanity Fair" that Thackeray first made for himself a 

really great reputation. He was previously well known by many as a 

clever and brilliant writer in Fraser and in Punch. He had published 

various stories and hooks of sketches, and Christmas books. " Vanity 

243 



MISS PINEERTON'S SCHOOL ON CEISWIGK MALL 243 

Pair " was his first long novel. It stands rather by itself ; it is a com- 
pendium of Thackeray's so-called cynicism — a primer of the philos- 
ophy. No other of his novels has so miich of his philosophy, pure 
and simple. It is little more than a study of character, — the plot 
is of the slightest. The constant theme seems to be, how stupid and 
ridiculous are the good, how clever and successful are the bad, and 
yet how plain it must be to everyone that the bad do not always pros- 
per, and that the good probably enjoy being stupid and ridiculous, and 
so that everything is well enough. Thackei'ay is remorseless in "Van- 
ity Fair." There is no good trait in Becky, only cleverness and 
wickedness ; there is no mercy for Amelia ; she must be plain and 
slow, though good and loving. Even the hero, who is truly good and 
noble, who waits and waits, patiently befriending the woman he loves, 
till she will marry him, — even he, because he is good, must be ridicu- 
lous ; otherwise, why is he called Dobbin ? The general run of the 
world of " Vanity Fair " is bad, and those who are good hardly get 
their deserts. To many this is the best of Thackeray's books. 

Edward Everett Hale. 

Miss Pinkerton's School on Chiswick Mall 

(From " Vanity Fair ") 

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sun- 
shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of 
Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, 
a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, 
driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the 
rate of four miles an hour. A black servant, who reposed on 
the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as 
soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining 
brass plate, and as he pulled the bell, at least a score of young 
heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the 
stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have 
recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima 
Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the win- 
dow of that lady's own drawing-room. 

" It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister," said Miss Jemima. " Sambo, 
the black servant, has just rung the bell, and the coachman 
has a new red waistcoat." 



244 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACEERAT 

" Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident 
to Miss Sedley's departure, Miss Jemima ? " asked Miss Pinker- 
ton herself, that majestic lady ; the Semiramis of Hammer- 
smith, the friend of Doctor Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. 
Chapone herself. 

" The girls were up at four this morning, packing her 
trunks, sister," replied Miss Jemima ; " we have made her a 
bow-pot." 

" Say a bouquet. Sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel." 

" Well, a booky as big almost as a haystack. I have put up 
two bottles of the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the 
receipt for making it, in Amelia's box." 

" And I trust, Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss 
Sedley's account. This is it, is it? Very good — ninety-three 
pounds, four shillings. Be kind enough to address it to John 
Sedley, Esq., and to seal this billet which I have written to his 
lady." 

In Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss 
Pmkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have 
been a letter from a sovereign. Only when her j)upils quitted 
the establishment, or when they were about to be married, and 
once, when poor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss 
Pinkerton known to write personally to the parents of her 
pupils ; and it was Jemima's opinion that if anything could 
console Mrs. Birch for her daughter's loss, it would be that 
pious and eloquent composition in which Miss Pinkerton an- 
nounced the event. 

In the present instance Miss Pinkerton's " billet " was to the 
following effect : 

"The Mall, Chiswick, June 15, 18 — . 
" Madam, — After her six years' residence at the Mall, I have the 
honor and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, 
as a young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their 
polished and refined circle. Those virtues which characterize the 
young English gentlewoman, those accomplishments which become 
her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss 
Sedley, whose industry and obedience have endeared her to her instruc- 



MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL ON CHISWICK MALL 245 

tors, and whose delightful sweetness of temper has charmed her aged 
and her youthful companions. 

" In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroid- 
ery and needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends' 
fondest wishes. In geography there is still much to be desired ; and a 
careful and undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily 
during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the ac- 
quirement of that dignified deportment and carriage^ so requisite for 
every young lady of fashion. 

' ' In the principles of religion and morality, Miss Sedley will be 
found worthy of an establishment which has been honored by the 
presence of The Great Lexicographer and the patronage of the ad- 
mirable Mrs. Chapone. In leaving the Malf, Miss Amelia carries with 
her the hearts of her companions, and the affectionate regards of her 
mistress, who has the honor to subscribe herself, madam, 
" Your most obliged humble sei'vant, 

'.' Barbara Pinkerton. 

"P. S. — Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley. It is particularly re- 
quested that Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed ten 
days. The family of distinction with whom she is engaged desire to 
avail themselves of her services as soon as possible." 

This letter completed, Miss Pinkerton proceeded to write her 
own name and Miss Sedley's in the fly-leaf of a " Johnson's 
Dictionary " — the interesting work which she invariably pre- 
sented to her scholars, on their departure from the Mall. On 
the cover was inserted a copy of " Lines addressed to a young 
lady on quitting Miss Pinkerton's school at the Mall ; by the 
late revered Dr. Samuel Johnson." In fact the Lexicographer's 
name was always on the lips of this majestic woman, and a 
visit he had paid to her was the cause of her reputation and 
her fortune. 

Being commanded by her elder sister to get the " Dixionary " 
from the cupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of 
-the book from the receptacle in question. When Miss Pinker- 
ton had finished the inscription in the first, Jemima, with 
rather a dubious and timid air, handed her the second. 

" For whom is this, Miss Jemima ? " said Miss Pinkerton 
with awful coldness. 



246 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

" For Becky Sharp," answered Jemima, trembling very much, 
and blushing over her withered face and neck, as she turned 
her back on her sister — " for Becky Sharp ; she's going 
too." 

" MISS JEMIMA ! " exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the larg- 
est capitals. " Are you in your senses ? Replace the ' dixion- 
ary ' in the closet, and never venture to take such a liberty in 
future." 

" Well, sister, it's only two and ninepence, and poor Becky 
will be miserable if she don't get one." 

" Send Miss Sedley 'instantly to me," said Miss Pinkerton. 
And so venturing not to say another word, poor Jemima 
trotted off, exceedingly flurried and nervous. 

Miss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of 
some wealth ; whereas Miss Sharp was an articled pupil, for 
whom Miss Pinkerton had done, as she thought, quite enough, 
without conferring upon her at parting the high honor of the 
" Dixionar3\" 

Although schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more 
nor less than church3^ard epitaphs; yet, as it sometimes hap- 
pens that a person departs this life who is really deserving of 
all the praises that the stone-cutter carves over his bones ; who 
is a good Christian, a good parent, child, wife, or husband ; who 
actually does leave a disconsolate family to mourn his loss ; so 
in academies of the male and female sex it occurs every now 
and then that the pupil is fully worthy of the praises bestowed 
by the disinterested instructor. Now, Miss Amelia Sedley was 
a young lady of this singular species, and deserved not only 
all that Miss Pinkerton said in her praise, but had many 
charming qualities which that pompous old Minerva of a 
woman could not see, from the differences of rank and age 
between her pupil and herself. 

For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, 
and dance like Hillisberg or Parisot, and embroider beautifully, 
and spell as well as a dictionary itself; but she had such a 
kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as 



MISS PINEERTON'S SCHOOL ON CHISWIGK MALL 247 

won the love of everybody who came near her, from Minerva 
down to the poor girl in the scullery, and the one-eyed tart 
woman's daughter, who was permitted to vend her wares once 
a week to the young ladies in the Mall. She had twelve inti- 
mate and bosom friends out of the twenty-four young ladies. 
Even envious Miss Briggs never spoke ill of her; high and 
mighty Miss Saltire (Lord Dexter 's granddaughter) allowed 
that her figure was genteel ; and as for Miss Swartz, the rich 
woolly-haired mulatto from St. Kitt's, on the day Amelia went 
away, she was in such a passion of tears that they were obliged 
to send for Dr. Floss, and half tipsify her with sal-volatile. 
Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed, from the 
high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dig- 
nified ; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times 
at the idea of Amelia's departure ; and but for fear of her sister, 
would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress 
(who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, 
is only allowed to parlor boarders. Honest Jemima had all the 
bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, 
and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. 
But why speak about her ? It is probable that we shall not 
hear of her again from this moment to the end of time, and 
that, when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, 
she and her awful sister will never issue therefrom into this 
little world of history. 

But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm 
in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a 
dear little creature ; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in 
novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of 
the most somber sort, that we are to have for a constant com- 
panion so guileless and good-natured a person. As she is not a 
heroine, there is no need to describe her person ; indeed, I am 
afraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her 
cheeks a great deal too round and red for a heroine ; but her 
face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the freshest of 
smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the 



248 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

brightest and honestest good-humor, except, indeed, when they 
filled with tears, and that was a great deal too often ; for the 
silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird ; or over a mouse, 
that the cat haply had seized upon ; or over the end of a novel, 
were it ever so stupid ; and as for saying an unkind word to 
her, were any persons hard-hearted enough to do so — why, so 
much the worse for them. Even Miss Pinkerton, that austere 
and god-like woman, ceased scolding her after the first time, 
and though she no more comprehended sensibility than she did 
algebra, gave all masters and teachers particular orders to treat 
Miss Sedley with the utmost gentleness, as harsh treatment was 
injurious to her. 

So that when the day of departure came, between her two 
customs of laughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puz- 
zled how to act. She was glad to go home, and yet most 
wofully sad at leaving school. For three days before, little 
Laura Martin, the orphan, followed her about like a little dog. 
She had to make and receive at least fourteen presents — to 
make fourteen solemn promises of writing every week : " Send 
my letters under cover to my grandpapa, the Earl of Dexter," 
said Miss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather shabby). " Never 
mind the postage, but write every day, you dear darling," said 
the impetuous and woolly-headed, but generous and affection- 
ate Miss Swartz ; and the orphan, little Laura Martin (who was 
just in round-hand) took her friend's hand and said, looking 
up in her face wistfully, " Amelia, when I write to you, I shall 
call you mamma." All which details, I have no doubt, Jones, 
who reads this book at his club, will pronounce to be excess- 
ively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental. Yes; 
I can see Jones at this minute (rather flushed with his joint of 
mutton and half-pint of wine), taking out his pencil and scoring 
under the words " foolish, twaddling," etc., and adding to them 
his own remark of " quite true.'' Well, he is a lofty man of 
genius, and admires the great and heroic in life and novels, and 
so had better take warning and go elsewhere. 

Well, then. The flowers, and the presents, and the trunks, 



MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL ON CRTS WICK MALL 249 

and bonnet boxes of Miss Sedley having been arranged by Mr. 
Sambo in the carriage together with a very small and weather- 
beaten old cow's-skin trunk, with Miss Sharp's card neatly 
nailed upon it, which was delivered by Sambo with a grin, and 
packed by the coachman with a corresponding sneer — the hour 
for parting came ; and the grief of that moment was consider- 
ably lessened by the admirable discourse which Miss Pinkerton 
addressed to her pupil. Not that the parting speech caused 
Amelia to philosophize, or that it armed her in any way with 
calmness, the result of argument ; but it was intolerably dull, 
pompous, and tedious ; and having the fear of her schoolmis- 
tress greatly before her eyes, Miss Sedley did not venture, in her 
presence, to give way to any ebullitions of private grief A 
seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced in the drawing- 
room, as on the solemn occasions of the visit of parents, and 
these refreshments being partaken of. Miss Sedley was at liberty 
to depart. 

" You'll go in and say good-by to Miss Pinkerton, Becky ! " 
said Miss Jemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any 
notice, and who was coming down-stairs with her own band- 
box. 

" I suppose I must," said Miss Sharp, calmly, and much to 
the wonder of Miss Jemima ; and the latter having knocked at 
the door and receiving j)ermission to come in, Miss Sharp ad- 
vanced in a very unconcerned manner, and said in French, and 
with a perfect accent : 

" Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux." 

Miss Pinkerton did not understand French ; she only di- 
rected those who did ; but biting her lips and throwing up her 
venerable and Roman-nosed head (on top of which figured a 
large and solemn turban), she said, " Miss Sharp, I wish you a 
good-morning." As the Hammersmith Semiramis spoke, she 
waved one hand both by way of adieu, and to give Miss Sharp 
an opportunity of shaking one of the fingers of the hand which 
was left out for that purpose. 

Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid 



250 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE TRACKERAT 

smile and bow, and quite declined to accept the proffered 
honor ; on which Semiramis tossed up her turban more indig- 
nantly than ever. In fact it was a little battle between the 
young lady and the old one, and the latter was worsted. 
" Heaven bless you, my child," said she, embracing Amelia, 
and scowling the while over the girl's shoulder at Miss Sharp. 
" Come away, Becky," said Miss Jemima, pulling the young 
woman away in great alarm, and the drawing-room door closed 
upon them forever. 

Then came the struggle and parting below. Words refuse 
to tell it. All the servants were there in the hall — all the dear 
friends — all the young ladies — the dancing-master who had 
just arrived ; and there was such a scuffling, and hugging, and 
kissing, and crying, with the hysterical yoops of Miss Swartz, 
the parlor-boarder, from her room, as no pen can depict, and as 
the tender heart would fain pass over. The embracing was 
over ; they parted — that is, Miss Sedley parted from her friends. 
Miss Sharp had demurely entered the carriage some minutes 
before. Nobody cried for leaving her. 

Sambo of the bandy legs slammed the carriage-door on his 
young weeping mistress. He sprang up behind the carriage. 
" Stop ! " cried Miss Jemima, rushing to the gate with a parcel. 

" It's some sandwiches, my dear," said she to Amelia. " You 
may be hungry, you know ; and Becky, Becky Sharp, here's a 
book for you that my sister — that is I — ' Johnson's Dixionary,' 
you know ; you mustn't leave us without that. Good-by. Drive 
on, coachman. God bless you ! " 

And the kind creature retreated into the garden, overcome 
with emotions. 

But lo ! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her 
pale face out of the window, and actually flung the book back 
into the garden. 

This almost caused Jemima to faint with terror. " Well, I 
never " — said she — " what an audacious " — emotion prevented 
her from completing either sentence. The carriage rolled away ; 
the great gates were closed ; the bell rang for the dancing les- 



MISS PINEERTON'S SCHOOL ON CHI8WICK MALL 251 

son. The world is before the two young ladies ; and so, fare- 
well to Chiswick Mall. 

When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned 
in the last chapter, and had seen the " Dixionary," flying over 
the pavement of the little garden, fall at length at the feet of 
the astonished Miss Jemima, the young lady's countenance, 
which had before worn an almost livid look of hatred, assumed 
a smile that perhaps was scarcely more agreeable, and she sank 
back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind, saying, " So much 
for the ' Dixionary ; ' and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick." 

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as 
Miss Jemima had been ; for consider, it was but one minute 
that she had left school, and the imj)ressions of six years are 
not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons 
those awes and terrors of youth last forever and ever. I know, 
for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me 
one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, 
" I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr. Raine." Fancy 
had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that 
evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in 
his heart then at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If 
the doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even 
at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, 

" Boy, take down your pant " Well, well, Miss Sedley was 

exceedingly alarmed at this act of insubordination. 

" How could you do so, Rebecca ? " at last she said, after a 
pause. 

" Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order 
me back to the black hole ? " said Rebecca, laughing. 

"No; but " 

" I hate the whole house," continued Miss Sharp in a fury. 
" I hope I may never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in 
the bottom of the Thames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were 
there, I wouldn't pick her out, that I wouldn't. Oh, how I should 
like to see her floating in the water yonder, turban and all, 



252 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE TEACEERAT 

with her train streaming after her, and her nose like the beak 
of a wherry ! " 

" Hush ! " cried Miss Sedley. 

"Why, will the black footman tell tales ? " cried Miss Rebecca, 
laughing. " He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I 
hate her with all my soul ; and I wish he would ; and I wish I 
had a means of proving it, too. For two years I have only had 
insults and outrage from her. I have been treated worse than 
any servant in the kitchen. I have never had a friend or a 
kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend the 
little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the 
Misses, until I grew sick of my mother-tongue. But that talk- 
ing French to Miss Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it ? She 
doesn't know a word of French, and was too proud to confess it. 
I believe it was that which made her part with me; and so 
thank Heaven for French. Vive la France ! Vive VEmpereur ! 
Vive Bonaparte ! " 

" Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame ! " cried Miss Sedley ; for 
this was the greatest blasphemy Rebecca had as yet uttered : 
and in those days in England to say, " Long live Bonaparte ! " 
was as much as to say, " Long live Lucifer ! " " How can you, 
how dare you, have such wicked, revengeful thoughts ? " 

" Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural," answered Miss 
Rebecca. " I'm no angel." And, to say the truth, she certainly 
was not. 

For it may be remarked in the course of this little conversa- 
tion (which took place as the coach rolled along lazily by the 
river-side) that though Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occa- 
sion to thank Heaven, it has been, in the first place, for ridding 
her of some person whom she hated, and secondly, for enabling 
her to bring her enemies to some sort of perplexity or confu- 
sion ; neither of which are very amiable motives for religious 
gratitude, or such as would be put forward by persons of a kind 
and placable disposition. Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the 
least kind or placable. All the world used her ill, said this 
young misanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that per- 



MISS PINKE-BTON'S 8CB00L ON CEISWICK MALL 253 

sons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treat- 
ment they get. The world is a looking-glass, and gives back 
to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and 
it will in turn look sourly upon you ; laugh at it, and with it, and 
it is a jolly, kind companion ; and so let all young persons take 
their choice. This is certain, that if the world neglected Miss 
Sharp, she never was known to have done a good action in 
behalf of anybody; nor can it be expected that twenty-four 
young ladies should all be as amiable as the heroine of this 
work. Miss Sedley (whom we have selected for the very reason 
that she was the best-natured of all, otherwise what on earth 
was to have prevented us from putting up Miss Swartz, or Miss 
Crump, or Miss Hopkins as heroine in her j)lace ?) — it could 
not be expected that every one should be of the humble and 
gentle temper of Miss Amelia Sedley, should take every oppor- 
tunity'- to vanquish Rebecca's hard-heartedness and ill-humor, 
and, by a thousand kind words and offices, overcome for once 
at least her hostility to her kind. 

Miss Sharp's father was an artist, and in that quality had 
given lessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton's school. He was a 
clever man, a pleasant companion, a careless student, with a 
great propensity for running into debt, and a partiality for the 
tavern. When he was drunk, he used to beat his wife and 
daughter; and the next morning, with a headache, he would 
rail at the world for its neglect of his genius, and abuse with a 
good deal of cleverness, and sometimes with perfect reason, the 
fools, his brother painters. As it was with the utmost difficulty 
that he could keep himself, and as he owed money for a mile 
round Soho, where he lived, he thought to better his circuirr- 
stances by marrying a young woman of the French nation, who 
was by profession an opera-girl. The humble calling of her 
female parent Miss Sharp never alluded to, but used to state 
subsequently that the Entrechats were a noble family of Gas- 
cony, and took great pride in her descent from them. And 
curious it is that, as she advanced in life, this young lady's 
ancestors increased in rank and splendor. 



254: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE TEACKERAT 

Rebecca's mother had had some education somewhere, and 
her daughter spoke French with purity and a Parisian accent. 
It was in those days rather a rare accomplishment, and led to 
her engagement with the orthodox Miss Pinkerton. For her 
mother being dead, her father, finding himself not likely to 
recover, after his third attack of delirium tremens, wrote a manly 
and pathetic letter to Miss Pinkerton, recommending the orphan 
child to her protection, and so descended to the grave, after two 
bailiffs had quarreled over his corpse. Rebecca was seventeen 
when she came to Chiswick, and was bound over as an articled 
pupil ; her duties being to talk French, as we have seen ; and her 
privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year,to gather 
scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school. 

She was small and slight in person; pale, sandy-haired, and 
with eyes habitually cast down; when they looked up, they 
were very large, odd, and attractive ; so attractive that the Rev- 
erend Mr. Crisp, fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar of 
Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss 
Sharp ; being shot dead by a glance of her eyes which was fired 
all the way across Chiswick Church from the school-pew to the 
reading-desk. This infatuated young man used sometirues to 
take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he had been presented 
by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriage 
in an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was 
charged to deliver. Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, 
and abruptly carried off her darling boy ; but the idea, even, 
of such an eagle in the Chiswick dovecot caused a great flutter 
in the breast of Miss Pinkerton, who would have sent away 
Miss Sharp, but that she was bound to her under a forfeit, and 
who never could thoroughly believe the young lady's protesta- 
tions that she had never exchanged a single word with Mr. 
Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two occasions when 
she had met him at tea. 

By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the 
establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had 
the dismal precocity of poverty. Many a dun had she talked 



MISS PINKBRTON'S SCHOOL ON CBISWICK MALL 255 

to, and turned away from her father's door ; many a tradesman 
had she coaxed and wheedled into good humor, and into the 
granting of one meal more. She sat commonly with her father, 
who was very proud of her wit, and heard the talk of many of 
his wild companions — often but ill-suited for a girl to hear. 
But she never had been a girl, she said ; she had been a woman 
since she was eight years old. 0, why did Miss Pinkerton let 
such a dangerous bird into her cage ? 

The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest 
creature in the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her 
father brought her to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the 
part of the ingenue; and only a year before the arrangement 
by which Rebecca had been admitted into her house, and when 
Rebecca was sixteen years old. Miss Pinkerton majestically and 
with a little speech made her a present of a doll — which was, 
by the way, the confiscated property of Miss Swindle, discov- 
ered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the father 
and daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the 
evening party (it was on the occasion of the speeches, when all 
the professors were invited), and how Miss Pinkerton would 
have raged had she seen the caricature of herself which the 
little mimic, Rebecca, managed to make out of her doll! Becky 
used to go through dialogues with it ; it formed the delight of 
Newman Street, Gerard Street, and the artists' quarter ; and the 
young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water 
with their lazy, dissolute, clever, jovial senior, used regularly to 
ask Rebecca if Miss Pinkerton was at home ; she was as well 
known to them, poor soul, as Mr. Lawrence or President West. 
Once she had the honor to pass a few days at Chiswick ; after 
which she brought back Jemima, and erected another doll as 
Miss Jemmy ; for though that honest creature had made and 
given her jelly and cake enough for three children, and a seven- 
shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense "of ridicule was far 
stronger than her gratitude, and she sacrificed Miss Jemmy 
quite as pitilessly as her sister. 

The catastrophe came, and she was brought to the Mall as to 



256 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THAGKEBAY 

her home. The rigid formaUty of the place suffocated her ; the 
prayers and the meals, the lessons and the walks, which were 
arranged with a conventual regularity, oppressed her almost 
beyond endurance; and she looked back to the freedom and 
the beggary of the old studio in Soho with so much regret 
that everybody, herself included, fancied she was consumed 
with grief for her father. She had a little room in the garret, 
where the maids heard her walking and sobbing at night ; but 
it was with rage and not with grief. She had not been much 
of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign. 
She had never mingled in the society of women; her father, 
reprobate as he was, was a man of talent ; his conversation was 
a thousand times more agreeable to her than the talk of such 
of her own sex as she now encountered. The pompous vanity 
of the old schoolmistress, the foolish good-humor of her sister, 
the silly chat and scandal of the elder girls, and the frigid cor- 
rectness of the governesses equally annoyed her ; and she had 
no soft maternal heart, this unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle 
and talk of the younger children, with whose care she was 
chiefly intrusted, might have soothed and interested her; but 
she lived among them two years, and not one was sorry that 
she went away. The gentle, tender-hearted Amelia Sedley was 
the only person to whom she could attach herself in the least ; 
and who could help attaching herself to Amelia ? 

The happiness, the superior advantages of the young women 
round about her gave Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy. 
" What airs that girl gives herself because she is an earl's grand- 
daughter," she said of one. " How they cringe and bow to that 
Creole, because of her hundred thousand pounds ! I am a 
thousand times cleverer and more charming than that creature, 
for all her wealth. I am as well bred as the earl's grand- 
daughter, for all her fine pedigree; and yet every one passes 
me by here. And yet, when I was at my father's, did not the 
men give up their gayest balls and parties in order to pass the 
evening with me? " She determined, at any rate, to get free 
from the prison in which she found herself, and now began to 



MISS PINKEUTON'S SCHOOL ON CmSWICK MALL 257 

act for herself, and for the first time to make connected plans 
for the future. 

She took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place 
offered her; and as she was already a musician and a good 
linguist, she speedily went through the little course of study 
which was considered necessary for ladies in those days. Her 
music she practiced incessantly, and one day, when the girls 
were out and she had remained at home she was overheard to 
play a piece so well that Minerva thought wisely, she could 
spare herself the expense of a master for the juniors, and inti- 
mated to Miss Sharp that she was to instruct them in music 
for the future. 

The girl refused ; and for the first time, and to the astonish- 
ment of the majestic mistress of the school. " I am here to 
speak French with the children," Rebecca said, abruptly, " not 
to teach them music, and save money for you. Give me money, 
and I will teach them." 

Minerva was obliged to yield, and, of course, disliked her 
from that day. " For five-and-thirty years," she said, and with 
grave justice, " I never have seen the individual who has dared 
in my own house to question my authority. I have nourished 
a viper in my bosom." 

" A viper — a fiddlestick," said Miss Sharp to the old lady, 
almost fainting with astonishment. " You took me because I 
was useful. There is no question of gratitude between us. I 
hate this place, and want to leave it. I will do nothing here 
but what I am obliged to do." 

It was in vain that the old lady asked her if she was aware 
she was speaking to Miss Pinkerton ? Rebecca laughed in her 
face, with a horrid, sarcastic, demoniacal laughter, that almost 
sent the schoolmistress into fits. " Give me a sum of money," 
said the girl, " and get rid of me — or, if you like better, get me 
a good place as governess in a nobleman's family — you can do 
so if you please." And in their further disputes she always 
returned to this point. " Get me a situation — we hate each 
other, and I am ready to go." 

S. M.— 17 



258 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

"Worthy Miss Pinkerton, although she had a Roman nose 
and a turban, and was as tall as a grenadier, and had been up 
to this time an irresistible princess, had no will or strength like 
that of her little apprentice, and in vain did battle against her, 
and tried to overawe her. Attempting once to scold her in 
public, Rebecca hit upon the before-mentioned plan of answer- 
ing her in French, which quite routed the old woman. In 
order to maintain her authority in her school, it became neces- 
sary to remove this rebel, this monster, this serpent, this fire- 
brand; and hearing about this time that Sir Pitt Crawley's 
family was in want of a governess, she actually recommended 
Miss Sharp for the situation, firebrand and serpent as she was. 
" I cannot, certainly," she said, " find fault with Miss Sharp's 
conduct, except to myself, and must allow that her talents and 
accomplishments are of a high order. As far as the head goes, 
at least, she does credit to the educational system pursued at 
my establishment." 

And so the schoolmistress reconciled the recommendation to 
her conscience, and the indentures were canceled, and the 
apprentice was free. 

Dr. Swishtaii's Academy 

(From " Vanity Fair ") 

Cuff's fight with Dobbin, and the unexpected issue of that 
contest, will long be remembered by every man who was edu- 
cated at Dr. Swishtaii's famous school. The latter youth (who 
used to be called Heigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, and by 
many other names indicative of puerile contempt) was the 
quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed, the dullest of all Dr. 
Swishtaii's young gentlemen. His parent was a grocer in the 
City ; and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted into Dr. 
Swishtaii's academy upon what are called " mutual princi- 
ples " — that is to say, the expenses of his board and schooling 
were defrayed by his father in goods, not money ; and he stood 
there — almost at the bottom of the school, in his scraggy cor- 



DR. 8WI8HTAW8 ACADEMY 259 

duroys and jacket, through the seams of which his great big 
bones were bursting — as the representative of so many pounds 
of tea, candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of which a very 
mild proportion was supplied for the puddings of the establish- 
ment), and other commodities. A dreadful day it was for 
young Dobbin when one of the youngsters of the school, having 
run into the town upon a poaching excursion for hardbake and 
polonies, espied the cart of Dobbin & Rudge, Grocers and Oil- 
men, Thames Street, London, at the doctor's door, discharging 
a cargo of the wares in which the firm dealt. 

Young Dobbin had no peace after that. The jokes were 
frightful, and merciless against him. "Hullo, Dobbin," one 
wag would say, " here's good news in the paper. Sugar is ris', 
my boy." Another would set a sum : " If a pound of mutton 
candles cost seven-pence-half-penny, how much must Dobbin 
cost?" and a roar would follow from all the circle of young 
knaves, usher and all, who rightly considered that the selling 
of goods by retail is a shameful and infamous practice, merit- 
ing the contempt and scorn of all real gentlemen. 

" Your father's only a merchant, Osborne," Dobbin said in 
private to the little boy who had brought down the storm upon 
him. At which the latter replied, haughtily, " My father's a 
gentleman, and keeps his carriage ; " and Mr. William Dobbin 
retreated to a remote outhouse in the playground, where he 
passed a half-holiday in the bitterest sadness and woe. Who 
amongst us is there that does not recollect similar hours of 
bitter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice, who shrinks 
before a slight, who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glow- 
ing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy? and how 
many of those gentle souls do you degrade, estrange, torture, for 
the sake of a little loose arithmetic and miserable dog Latin ? 

Now, William Dobbin, from an incapacity to acquire the 
rudiments of the above language, as they are propounded in 
that wonderful book, the " Eton Latin Grammar," was com- 
pelled to remain among the very last of Dr. Swishtail's scholars, 
and was " taken down " continually by little fellows with pink 



260 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

faces and pinafores when he marched up with the lower form, 
a giant amongst them, with liis downcast, stupefied look, his 
dog-eared primer, and his tight corduroys. High and low all 
made fun of him. They sewed up those corduroys, tight as 
they were. They cut his bed-strings. They upset buckets and 
benches, so that he might break his shins over them, which 
he never failed to do. They sent him parcels, which, when 
opened, were found to contain the paternal soap and candles. 
There was no little fellow but had his jeer and joke at Dobbin ; 
and he bore everything quite patiently, and was entirely dumb 
and miserable. 

Cuff, on the contrary, was the great chief and dandy of the 
Swishtail Seminary. He smuggled wine in. He fought the 
town boys. Ponies used to come for him to ride home on Sat- 
urdays. He had his top-boots in his room, in which he used to 
hunt in the holidays. He had a gold repeater ; and took snuff 
like the doctor. He had been to the opera, and knew the merits 
of the principal actors, preferring Mr. Kean to Mr. Kemble. 
He could knock you off forty Latin verses in an hour. He 
could make French poetry. What else didn't he know, or 
couldn't he do ? They said even the doctor himself was afraid 
of him. 

Cuff, the unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his sub- 
jects and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one 
blacked his shoes ; that toasted his bread ; others would fag out, 
and give him balls at cricket during whole summer after- 
noons. " Figs " was the fellow whom he despised most, and 
with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, 
he scarcely ever condescended to hold personal communication. 

One day in private the two young gentlemen had had a dif- 
ference. Figs, alone in the schoolroom, was blundering over a 
home letter ; when Cuff, entering, bade him go upon some mes- 
sage of which tarts were probably the subject. 

" I can't," says Dobbin ; " I want to finish my letter." 

" You canH f " says Mr. Cuff, laying hold gf that document 
(in which many words were scratched out, many were misspelt, 



DR. SWISHTAirS ACADEMY 261 

on which had been spent I don't know how much thought, and 
labor, and tears ; for the poor fellow was writing to his mother, 
who was fond of him, although she was a grocer's wife and lived 
in a back parlor in Thames Street) — " you can't f " says Mr. Cuff. 
" I should like to know why, pray ? Can't you write to old 
Mother Figs to-morrow ? " 

" Don't call names," Dobbin said, getting off the bench, very 
nervous. 

" Well, sir, will you go ? " crowed the cock of the school. 

" Put down the letter," Dobbin replied ; " no gentleman 
readth letterth." 

'' Well, noil) will you go ? " says the other. 

" No, I won't. Don't strike, or I'll thmash you," roars out 
Dobbin, springing to a leaden inkstand, and looking so wicked 
that Mr. Cuff paused, turned down his coat-sleeves again, put 
his hands into his j)ockets, and walked away with a sneer. But 
he never meddled personally with the grocer's boy after that ; 
though we must do him the justice to say he always spoke of 
Mr. Dobbin with contempt behind his back. 

Some time after this interview it happened that Mr. Cuff, on 
a sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighborhood of poor William 
Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the playground, spell- 
ing over a favorite copy of the " Arabian Nights," which he 
had — apart from the rest of the school, who were pursuing their 
various sports — quite lonely, and almost happy. If people 
would but leave children to themselves ; if teachers would cease 
to bully them ; if parents would not insist upon directing their 
thoughts, and dominating their feelings — those feelings and 
thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and 
I know of each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our 
neighbors, and how far more beautiful and sacred are the 
thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be, 
than those of the dull and world-corrupted person who rules 
him) — if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children 
alone a little more — small harm would accrue, although a less 
quantity of as in prsesenti might be acquired. 



262 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and 
was away with Sinbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or 
with Prince Ahmed" and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful 
cavern where the prince found her, and whither we should all 
like to make a tour, when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weep- 
ing, woke up his pleasant reverie ; and looking up he saw Cuff 
before him, belaboring a little boy. 

It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer's 
cart ; but he bore little malice, not at least toward the young 
and small. " How dare you, sir, break the bottle? " says Cuff 
to the little urchin, swinging a yellow cricket-stump over him. 

The boy had been instructed to get over the playground 
wall (at a selected spot where the broken glass had been 
removed from the top, and niches made convenient in the 
brick) ; to run a quarter of a mile ; to jDurchase a pint of rum- 
shrub on credit; to brave all the doctor's outlying spies, and to 
clamber back into the playground again ; during the perform- 
ance of which feat his foot had slipped, and the bottle was 
broken, and the shrub had been spilled, and his pantaloons had 
been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly 
guilty and trembling, though harmless, wretch. 

" How dare you, sir, break it?" says Cuff; " you blundering 
little thief ! You drank the shrub, and now you pretend to 
have broken the bottle. Hold out your hand, sir." 

Down came the stump with a great heavy thump on the 
child's hand. A moan followed. Dobbin looked up. The 
Fairy Peribanou had fled into the inmost cavern with Prince 
Ahmed ; the Poc had whisked away Sinbad the Sailor out of 
the Valley of Diamonds, out of sight, far into the clouds ; and 
there was every-day life before honest William ; and a big boy 
beating a little one without cause. 

" Hold out your other hand, sir," roars Cuff to his little 
school-fellow, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin 
quivered, and gathered himself up in his narrow old clothes. 

" Take that, you little devil ! " cried Mr. Cuff, and down came 
the wicket again on the child's hand. Don't be horrified, 



DR. 8W1SRIAWS ACADEMY 263 

ladies, every boy at a public school has done it. Your children 
will so do and be done by in all probability. Down came the 
wicket again, and Dobbin started up. 

I can't tell what his motive was. Torture in a public school 
is as much licensed as the knout in Russia. It would be 
ungentleman-like (in a manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin's 
foolish soul revolted against that exercise of tyranny ; or per- 
haps he had a hankering feeling of revenge in his mind, and 
longed to measure himself against that splendid bully and 
tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp, circumstance* 
banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, in the place. 
Whatever may have been his incentive, however, up he sprang, 
and screamed out, " Hold off. Cuff; don't bully that child any 
more ; or I'll " 

" Or you'll what ? " Cuff asked in amazement at this inter- 
ruption. " Hold out your hand, you little beast ! " 

" I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life," 
Dobbin said, in reply to the first part of Cuff's, sentence ; and 
little Osborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder and 
incredulity at seeing this amazing champion put up suddenly 
to defend him ; while Cuff's astonishment was scarcely less. 
Fancy our late monarch, George III., when he heard of the 
revolt of the North American colonies ; fancy brazen Goliath 
when little David stepped forward and claimed a meeting ; and 
you have the feelings of Mr. Reginald Cuff when this rencontre 
was proposed to him. 

" After school," says he, of course ; after a pause and a look 
as much as to say, " Make your will, and communicate your 
best wishes to your friends between this time and that." 

" As you please," Dobbin said. " You must be my bottle- 
holder, Osborne." 

" Well, if you like," little Osborne replied ; for you see his papa 
kept a carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his champion. 

Yes, when the hour of battle came, he was almost ashamed to 
say, " Go it, Figs ; " and not a single other boy in the place 
uttered that cry for the first two or three rounds, of this famous 



264 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THAGKEnAT 

combat ; at the commencement of which the scientific CufF 
with a contemptuous smile on his face, and as light and as gay 
as if he was at a ball, planted his blows upon his adversary, 
and floored that unlucky champion three times running. At 
each fall there was a cheer; and everybody was anxious to 
have the honor of offering the conqueror a knee. 

*' What a licking I shall get when it's over ! " young Osborne 
thought, picking up his man. " You'd best give in," he said to 
Dobbin ; " it's only a thrashing, Figs, and you know I'm used 
to it." But Figs, all whose limbs were in a quiver, and whose 
nostrils were breathing rage, put his little bottle-holder aside, 
and went in for a fourth time. 

As he did not in the least know how to parry the blows that 
were aimed at himself, and Cuff had begun the attack on the 
three preceding occasions, without ever allowing his enemy to 
strike. Figs now determined that he would commence the en- 
gagement by a charge on his own part ; and accordingly, being 
a left-handed man, brought that arm into action, and hit out a 
couple of times with all his might — once at Mr. Cuff's left eye 
and once on his beautiful Roman nose. 

Cuff went down this time to the astonishment of the assem- 
bly. " Well hit, by Jove ! " says little Osborne, with the air of 
a connoisseur, clapping his man on the back. " Give it him 
with the left. Figs, my boy." 

Figs's left made terrific play during all the rest of the com- 
bat. Cuff went down every time. At the sixth round, there 
were almost as many fellows shouting out, " Go it. Figs ! " as 
there were youths exclaiming, " Go it, Cuff ! " At the twelfth 
round the latter champion was all abroad, as the saying is, and 
had lost all presence of mind and power of attack or defense. 
Figs, on the contrary, was as calm as a Quaker. His face being 
quite pale, his eyes shining open, and a great cut on his under 
lip bleeding profusely, gave this young fellow a fierce and 
ghastly air, which perhaps struck terror into many spectators. 
Nevertheless, his intrepid adversary prepared to close for the 
thirteenth time. 



DR. SWI8HTAW8 ACADEMY 265 

If I had the pen of a Napier, or a BeWs Life,,! should Hke to 
describe this combat properly. It was the last charge of the 
Guard (that is, it would have been only Waterloo had not yet 
taken place) — it was Ney's column breasting the hill of La 
Haye Sainte, bristling with ten thousand bayonets, and crowned 
with twenty eagles — it was the shout of the beef-eating British, 
as, leaping down the hill, they rushed to hug the enemy in the 
savage arms of battle — in other words, Cuff coming up full of 
pluck, but quite reeling and groggy, the Fig-merchant put in 
his left as usual on his adversary's nose, and sent him down for 
the last time. 

" I think that will do for him," Figs said, as his opponent 
dropped as neatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot's ball 
plump into the pocket at billiards ; and the fact is, when time 
was called, Mr. Reginald Cuff was not able, or did not choose, 
to stand up again. 

And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as would 
make you think he had been their darling champion through 
the whole battle ; and as absolutely brought Dr. Swishtail out 
of his study, curious to know the cause of the uproar. He 
threatened to flog Figs violently, of course ; but Cuff, who had 
come to himself by this time, and was washing his wounds, 
stood up and said, " It's my fault, sir — not Figs's — not Dobbin's. 
I was bullying a little boy; and he served me right." By 
which magnanimous speech he not only saved his conqueror a 
whipping, but got back all his ascendency over the boys, which 
his defeat had nearly cost him. 

Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of the 
transaction. 

' ' Sugarcane House, Richmond, March 18 — . 
• ' ' Dear Mamma — I hope you are quite well. I should be much 
obliged to you to send me a cake and five shillings. There has been a 
fight here between Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, you know, was the Cock of 
the School. They fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked. So 
Cuff is now Only Second Cock. The fight was about me. Cuff was 
licking me for breaking a bottle of milk, and Figs wouldn't stand it. 
We call him Figs because his father is a Grocer — Figs & Rudge, 



266 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKEBAT 

Thames St., City — I think as he fought for me you ought to buy your 
Tea & Sugar at his father's. CuflP goes home every Saturday, but can't 
this, because he has 2 Black Eyes. He has a white Pony to come 
and fetch him, and a groom in livery on a bay mare. I wish my Papa 
would let me have a Pony, and I am 

Your dutiful Son, 

"George Sedley Osborne. 
"P. S. — Give my love to little Emmy. I am cutting her out a 
Coach in cardboard. Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake." 

In consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose pro- 
digiously in the estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the 
name of Figs, which had been a byword of reproach, became as 
respectable and popular a nickname as any other in use in the 
school. " After all, it's not his fault that his father's a grocer," 
George Osborne said, who, though a little chap, had a very high 
popularity among the Swishtail youth ; and his opinion was 
received with great applause. It was voted low to sneer at 
Dobbin about this accident of birth. " Old Figs " grew to be a 
name of kindness and endearment ; and the sneak of an usher 
jeered at him no longer. 

And Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He 
made wonderful advances in scholastic learning. The superb 
Cuff himself, at whose condescension Dobbin could only blush 
and wonder, helped him on with his Latin verses ; " coached " 
him in play hours, carried him triumphantly out of the little- 
boy class into the middle-sized form ; and even there got a fair 
place for him. It was discovered, that although dull at class- 
ical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick. To 
the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a 
French prize-book, at the public midsummer examination. 
You should have seen his mother's face, when " Telemaque " 
(that delicious romance) was presented to him by the doctor in 
the face of the whole school and the parents and company, with 
an inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin. All the boys clapped 
hands in token of applause and sympathy. His blushes, his 
stumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet which he 
crushed as he went back to his place, who shall describe or cal- 



DB. SWISHTAirS ACADEMY 267 

culate ? Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for 
the first time, gave him two guineas publicly ; most of which 
he spent- in a general tuck out for the school ; and he came 
back in a tail-coat after the holidays. 

Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that 
this happy change in all his circumstances arose from his own 
generous and manly disposition ; he chose, from some perverse- 
ness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency and benev- 
olence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed 
such a love and affection as is only felt by children — such an 
affection as we read in the charming fairy book uncouth Orson 
had for splendid young Valentine his conqueror. He flung 
himself down at little Osborne's feet, and loved him. 

Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne 
in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday. He 
believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be 
the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the 
most generous of created boys. He shared his money with 
him ; bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, 
gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic books, with 
large colored pictures of knights and robbers, in many of which 
latter you might read inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, 
Esq., from his attached friend, William Dobbin — the which 
tokens of homage George received very graciously, as became 
his superior merit. 

So that when Lieutenant Osborne, coming to Russell Square 
on the day of the Vauxhall party, said to the ladies, " Mrs. 
Sedley, ma'am, I hope you have room ; I've asked Dobbin of 
ours to come and dine here and go with us to Vauxhall. He's 
almost as modest as Jos." 

" Modesty ! pooh ! " said the stout gentleman, casting a vain- 
queur look at Miss Sharp. 

"He is — but you are incomparably more graceful, Sedley," 
Osborne added, laughing. "I met him at the Bedford, when I 
went to look for you; and I told him that Miss Amelia was 



268 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

come home, and that we were all bent on going out for a 
night's pleasuring ; and that Mrs. Sedley had forgiven his 
breaking the punch-bowl at the child's party. Don't you 
remember that catastrophe, ma'am, seven years ago ? " 

" Over Mrs. Flamingo's crimson silk gown," said good- 
natured Mrs. Sedley. " What a gawky it was ! And his sisters 
are not much more graceful. Lady Dobbin was at Highbury 
last night with three of them. Such figures ! my dears." 

" The alderman's very rich, isn't he ? " Osborne said archly. 
" Don't you think one of the daughters would be a good spec 
for me, ma'am ? " 

" You foolish creature ! Who would take you, I should like 
to know, with your yellow face ? " 

" Mine a yellow face ? Stop till you see Dobbin. Why, he 
had the yellow fever three times ; twice at Nassau, and once at 
St. Kitt's." 

" Well, well ; yours is quite yellow enough for us. Isn't it, 
Emmy ? " Mrs. Sedley said : at which speech Miss Amelia only 
made a smile and a blush ; and looking at Mr. George 
Osborne's pale, interesting countenance, and those beautiful, 
black, curling, shining whiskers, which the young gentleman 
himself regarded with no ordinary complacency, she thought in 
her little heart, that in his Majesty's army, or in the wide world, 
there never was such a face or such a hero. " I don't care 
about Captain Dobbin's complexion," she said, " or about his 
awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know;" her little 
reason being that he was the friend and champion of George. 

" There's not a finer fellow in the service," Osborne said, " nor 
a better officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly." And 
he looked toward the glass himself with much naivete ; and in 
so doing, caught Miss Sharp's eye fixed keenly upon him, at 
which he blushed a little, and Rebecca thought in her heart, 
"Ah, mon beau monsieur ! I think I have your gauge " — the 
little artful minx! 

That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing- 
room in a white muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vaux- 



DR. 8WISHTAW8 ACADEMY 269 

hall, singing like a lark and as fresh as a rose, a very tall, 
ungainly gentleman, with large hands and feet, and large ears, 
set off by a closely cropped head of black hair, and in the hide- 
ous military frogged coat and cocked hat of those times, ad- 
vanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiest bows 
that was ever performed by a mortal. 

This was no other than Captain William Dobbin, of his 

Majesty's Regiment of Foot, returned from yellow fever, 

in the West Indies, to which the fortune of the service had 
ordered his regiment, whilst so many of his gallant comrades 
were reaping glory in the Peninsula. 

He had arrived with a knock so very timid and quiet that 
it was inaudible to the ladies up-stairs ; otherwise, you may be 
sure. Miss Amelia would never have been so bold as to come 
singing into the room. As it was, the sweet, fresh little voice 
went right into the captain's heart, and nestled there. When 
she held out her hand for him to shake, before he enveloped it 
in his own, he paused, and thought, " Well, is it possible — are 
you the little maid I remember in the pink frock, such a short 
time ago — the night I upset the punch-bowl, just after I was 
gazetted ? Are you the little girl that George Osborne said 
should marry him? What a blooming young creature you 
seem, and what a prize the rogue has got ! " All this he 
thought, before he took Amelia's hand into his own, and as 
he let his cocked hat fall. 

His history since he left school, until the very moment when 
we have the pleasure of meeting him again, although not fully 
narrated, has yet, I think, been indicated sufficiently for an in- 
genious reader by the conversation in the last page. Dobbin, 
the despised grocer, was Alderman Dobbin — Alderman Dobbin 
was Colonel of the City Light Horse, then burning with mili- 
tary ardor to resist the French Invasion. Colonel Dobbin's 
corps, in which old Mr. Osborne himself was but an indifferent 
corporal, had been reviewed by the Sovereign and the Duke of 
York ; and the colonel and alderman had been knighted. His 
son had entered the army ; and young Osborne followed pres- 



270 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACEEBAY 

ently in the same regiment. They had served ia the West 
Indies and in Canada. Their regiment had just come home, 
and the attachment of Dobbin to George Osborne was as warm 
and generous now as it had been when the two were schoolboys. 

Mr. Veal's School 

(From "Vanity Fair") 

Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his grand- 
father's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his father's 
room in the house, and heir apparent of all the splendors there. 
The good looks, gallant bearing, and gentleman-like appearance 
of the boy won the grandsire's heart for him. Mr. Osborne was 
as proud of him as ever he had been of the elder George. 

The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than 
had been awarded to his father. Osborne's commerce had pros- 
pered greatly of late years. His wealth and importance in the 
City had very much increased. He had been glad enough in 
former days to put the elder George to a good private school ; 
and a commission in the army for his son had been a source of 
no small pride to him ; for little George and his future prospects 
the old man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman 
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying regarding 
little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a collegian, a 
Parliament man — a baronet, perhaps. The old man thought 
he would die contented if he could see his grandson in a fair 
way to such honors. He would have none but a tip-toiD college 
man to educate him — none of your quacks and pretenders — 
no, no. A few years before, he used to be savage, and inveigh 
against all parsons, scholars, and the like — declaring that they 
were a pack of humbugs and quacks, that weren't fit to get their 
living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set of supercili- 
ous dogs, that pretended to look down upon British merchants 
and gentlemen who could buy up half a hundred of 'em. He 
would mourn now, in a very solemn manner, that his own edu- 
cation had been neglected, and repeatedly point out, in pompous 



MR. YEAV8 8CB00L 271 

orations to Georgy, the necessity and excellence of classical ac- 
quirements. 

Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in the 
dining-room, and read the Morning Post, just like a grown-up 
man. "How he du dam an swear," the servants would cry, 
delighted at his precocity. Those who remembered the captain 
and his father declared Master George was his pa, every inch 
of him. He made the house lively by his activity, his imperi- 
ousness, his scolding, and his good nature. 

George's education was confided to a neighboring scholar and 
pedagogue, who " prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for 
the universities, the senate, and the learned professions ; whose 
system did not embrace the degrading corporal severities still 
practiced at the ancient places of education, and in whose family 
the pupils could find the elegancies of refined society and the 
confidence and affection of a home." It was in this way that 
the Reverend Lawrence A^eal, of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, Bare- 
acres, strove with Mrs. Veal, his wife, to entice pupils. 

By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the domestic 
chaplain and his lady generally succeeded in having one or two 
scholars by them who paid a high figure and were thought 
to be in uncommonly comfortable quarters. There was a large 
West Indian, whom nobody came to see, with a mahogany com- 
plexion, a woolly head, and an exceedingly dandified appear- 
ance ; there was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty, whose 
education had been neglected, and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal 
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two sons of 
Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's Service; these 
four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's genteel board, when 
Georgy was introduced to her establishment. 

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy ; 
he arrived in the morning under the guardianship of his friend 
Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine, would ride away in the after- 
noon on his pony followed by the groom. The wealth of his 
grandfather was reported in the school to be prodigious. The 



272 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

Reverend Mr. Veal used to compliment Georgy upon it person- 
ally, warning him that he was destined for a high station ; that 
it became him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for 
the lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age ; that 
obedience in the child was the best preparation for command 
in the man ; and that he therefore begged George would not 
bring toffy into the school, and ruin the health of the Master 
Bangles, who had everything they wanted at the elegant and 
abundant table of Mrs. Veal. 

With respect to learning, " the Curriculum," as Mr. Veal loved 
to call it, was of prodigious extent; and the young gentlemen 
in Hart Street might learn a something of every known science. 
The Reverend Mr. Veal had an orrery, an electrifying machine, 
a turning lathe, a theater (in the wash-house), a chemical appa- 
ratus, and what he called a select library of all the works of the 
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages. He 
took the boys to the British Museum, Mid descanted upon the 
antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so that 
audiences would gather round him as he spoke; and all Blooms- 
bury highly admired him as a prodigiously well-informed man. 
And whenever he spoke (which he did almost always), he took 
care to produce the very finest and longest words of which the 
vocabulary gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as 
cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet as to 
use a little stingy one ! 

Thus he would say to George in school : " I observed on my 
return home from taking the indulgence of an evening's scien- 
tific conversation with my excellent friend Dr. Bulders — a true 
archseologian — that the windows of your venerated grandfath- 
er's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were illuminated 
as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right in my conjecture 
that Mr. Osborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round 
his sumptuous board last night ? " 

Little Georgy, who had considerable humor, and used to mimic 
Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and dexterity, would reply 
that Mr. V. was quite correct in his surmise. 



DR. SWISHTAIL'8 ACADEMY 273 

" Then those friends who had the honor of partaking of Mr. 
Osborne's hospitahty, gentlemen, had no reason, I will lay any 
wager, to complain of their repast. I myself have been more 
than once so favored. (By the way. Master Osborne, you came 
a little late this morning, and have been a defaulter in this 
respect more than once.) I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble 
as I am, have been found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's 
elegant hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great 
and noble of the world — for I presume that I may call my excel- 
lent friend and patron, the Right Honorable George Earl of 
Bareacres, as one of the number — yet I assure you that the 
board of the British merchant was to the full as richly served, 
and his reception as gratifying and noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we 
will resume, if you please, that passage of Eutropius which was 
interrupted by the late arrival of Master Osborne." 

To this great man George's education was for some time 
intrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases, but thought 
him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow made friends of 
Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She liked to be in the house, 
and see Georgy coming to school there. She liked to be asked 
to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni, which took place once a month (as 
you were informed on pink cards, with AQHNH engraved on 
them), and where the professor welcomed his pupils and their 
friends to weak tea and scientific conversation. Poor little 
Amelia never missed one of these entertainments, and thought 
them delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her. 
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather, and em- 
brace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the delightful even- 
ing she had passed, when, the company having retired and 
Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his attendant, poor Mrs. 
Osborne put on her cloaks and her shawls preparatory to 
walking home. 

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this valu- 
able master of a hundred sciences, to judge from the weekly 
reports which the lad took home to his grandfather, his i^rog- 
ress was remarkable. The names of a score or more desirable 

s. M.— 18 



^74 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE TMAOEERAT 

branches of knowledge were printed on a table, and the pupil's 
progress in each was marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy 
was pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien, 
and so forth ; and everybody had prizes for everything at the 
end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the woolly-headed young 
gentleman, and half-brother to the Honorable Mrs. MacMull, 
and Mr. Bluck, the neglected young pupil of three-and-twenty 
from the agricultural districts, and that idle 3^oung scapegrace 
of a Master Todd before mentioned, received little eighteen- 
penny books, with " Athene " engraved in them, and a pom- 
pous Latin inscription from the professor to his young friends. 

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of the house 
of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced Todd from being 
a clerk to be a junior partner in his establishment. 

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd (who 
in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his cards, and 
became a man of decided fashion), while Miss Osborne had 
accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font, and gave her pro- 
tegee a prayer-book, a collection of tracts, a volume of very low- 
church poetry, or some such memento of her goodness every 
year. Miss 0. drove the Todds out in her carriage now and 
then ; when they were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls 
and waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square 
to Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to Rus- 
sell Square indeed ; and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty hand at 
cutting paper trimmings for haunches of mutton, and could 
make flowers, ducks, etc., out of turnips and carrots in a very 
creditable manner, would go to " the Square," as it was called, 
and assist in the prej)arations incident to a great dinner, with- 
out even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet. 
If any guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to 
dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped 
in with a muffled knock, and were in the drawing-room by the 
time Miss Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that 
apartment ; and ready to fire off duets and sing until the gentle- 
men came up. Poor Maria Todd ; poor young lady ! How she 



Dit. S WISE TAIL '8 ACADEMY 275 

had to work and thrum at these duets and sonatas in the street, 
before they appeared in public in the square ! 

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate, that Georgy was to 
domineer over everybody with whom he came in contact, and 
that friends, relatives, and domestics were all to bow the knee 
before the little fellow. It must be owned that he accommo- 
dated himself very willingly to this arrangement. Most people 
do so. And Georgy liked to play the part of master, and per- 
haps had a natural aptitude for it. . 

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study 
at the Reverend Mr. Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the 
Right Honorable the Earl of Bareacres was spouting away as 
usual — a carriage drove up to the door decorated with the 
statue of Athene, and two gentlemen stepped out. The young 
Masters Bangles rushed to the window, with a vague notion 
that their father might have arrived from Bombay. The great 
hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly 
over a passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against 
the panes, and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang 
from the box and let out the persons in the carriage. 

" It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said, as a thunder- 
ing knock came to the door. 

Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain him- 
self, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future pupils, down 
to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for laying his book down. 

The boy in the shabby livery, with the faded copper buttons, 
who always thrusts himself into the tight coat to open the door, 
came into the study and said, " Two gentlemen want to see 
Master Osborne." The professor had had a trifling altercation 
in the morning with that young gentleman, owing to a differ- 
ence about the introduction of crackers in school-time ; but his 
face resumed its habitual expression of bland courtes}^, as he 
said, " Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go and see 
your carriage friends — to whom I beg you to convey the re- 
spectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal." 

Georgy went into the reception room, and saw two strangers, 



276 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

whom he looked at with his head up in his usual haughty 
manner. One was fat, with mustachios, and the other was 
lean and long, in a blue frock-coat, with a brown face, and a 
grizzled head. 

" My God, how like he is ! " said the long gentleman, with a 
start. " Can you guess who we are, George? " 

The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he was 
moved, and his eyes brightened. " I don't know the other," 
he said, " but I should think you must be Major Dobbin." 

Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled with pleas- 
ure as he greeted tlje boy, and, taking both the other's hands 
in his own drew the lad to him, and said : 

" Your mother has talked to you about me — has she ? " 

" That she has," Georgy answered, " hundreds and hundreds 
of times." 

The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the major was George's 
miniature, for which she ran up-stairs on her arrival at home. 
It was not half handsome enough, of course, for the boy, but 
wasn't it noble of him to think of bringing it to his mother ? 
Whilst her papa was awake she did not talk much about 
Georgy. To hear about Mr. Osborne and Russell Square was 
not agreeable to the old man, who very likely was unconscious 
that he had been living for some months past mainly on the 
bounty of his richer rival ; and lost his temper if allusion was 
made to the other. . . . 

At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in his 
chair, and then it was Amelia's opportunity to commence her 
conversation, which she did with great eagerness; it related 
exclusively to Georgy. She did not talk at all about her own 
sufferings at breaking from him, for indeed this worthy woman, 
though she was half killed by the separation from the child, 
yet thought it was very wicked in her to repine at losing him ; 
but everything concerning him, his virtues, talents, and pros- 
pects, she poured out. She described his angelic beauty ; nar- 
rated a hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of 
mind whilst living with her ; how a royal duchess had stopped 



DR. SWI8HTAWS ACADEMY 211 

and admired him in Kensington Gardens ; how splendidly he 
was cared for now, and how he had a groom and a pony ; what 
quickness and cleverness he had, and what a prodigiously well- 
read and delightful person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, 
George's master. " He knows everything" Amelia said. " He 
has the most delightful parties. You who are so learned your- 
self, and have read so much, and are so clever and accomplished 
— don't shake 3^our head and say no — he always used to say 
you were — you will be charmed with Mr. Veal's parties — the 
last Tuesday in every month. He says there is no place in the 
bar or the senate that Georgy may not aspire to. Look here," 
and she went to the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of 
Georgy's composition. This great effort of genius, which is 
still in the possession of George's mother, is as follows : 

On selfishness. — Of all the vicQS which degrade the human charac- 
ter, Selfishness is the most odious and contemptible. An undue love 
of Self leads to the most monstrous crimes, and occasions the greatest 
misfortunes both in States and Families. As a selfish man will im- 
poverish his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish king 
brings ruin on his people and often plunges them into war. 

Example : The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by the poet Homer, 
occasioned a thousand woes to the Greeks — Mvpi' Axocioii aXyk aBrjus 
— (Horn. II. A. 2). The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte 
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe, and caused him to perish, 
himself, on a miserable island — that of Saint Helena in the Atlantic 
Ocean. 

We see by these examples that we are not to consult our own in- 
terest and ambition, but that we are to consider the interests of others 
as well as our own. 

George S. Osborne. 

Athene House, April -lA, 1823. 

" Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek, 
too, at his age," the delighted mother said. " William," 
she added, holding out her hand to the major, "what a 
treasure Heaven has given me in that boy ! He is the 
comfort of my life, and he is the image of — of him that's 
gone ! " 



THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

1823. 

Thomas Hughes, M.P., was born in the county of Berks, England, 
in 1823. His family is an old one, of eminent respectability. When 
a little boy, at Twyford school, he received the nickname of "Cad- 
mus," or "Cad," from an amusing blunder, in which he described the 
ancient worthy of that name as a postman, or mail-carrier, because he 
" first carried letters from Asia to Grreece. " At ten years of age young 
Hughes went with his brother to the school of the celebrated Dr. 
Arnold, at Rugby, where he remained eight years. He was graduated 
from Oriel College, at Oxford, in 1845. He was admitted to the bar in 
1848, and became a liberal in politics. He entered Parliament in 1865, 
and was a member for nine years. He has served also as queen's 
counsel, president of the Workingmen's College, chief manager of the 
Crystal Palace Company, colonel of a volunteer rifle company, and 
county judge of Cheshire. He visited America in 1870. " Tom Brown 
at Rugby " was written in 1858, and ' ' Tom Brown at Oxford " appeared 
four years later. These, together with ' ' The Life of Alfred the Great " 
and " The Manliness of Christ," are his most famous works. 

Characterization 

"Tom Brown" is the exact picture of the bright side of a school- 
boy's experiences, told with a life, a spirit, and a fond minuteness of 
detail and recollection which are infinitely honorable to the author. 
Many have received equally strong impressions from their passage 
through a public school, but few would, we think, be able to paint 
them with so much vigor and fidelity. It requires so much courage, 
so much honesty, so much purity, to traverse that stage of life without 
doing and suffering many things which make the recollection of it 
painful, that a man Avho can honestly describe his school experience 
in the tone which the author of "Tom Brown" maintains throughout 
this volume without an effort, has a very high claim, indeed, to the 
respect and gratitude of his readers. It would be hard to imagine a 
more cheerful or a more useful lesson to a public-school boy. Every 
corner of the playhouse, every rule of football, every quaint school 
278 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 279 

usage, almost every room in the schoolhouse, is sketched so boldly, yet 
so accurately, that Rughceans will no doubt be able to realize to them- 
selves every sentence of the book. Even the gentiles of Eton, Har- 
row, or Winchester, bigoted as they are sure to be in favor of their 
own institutions, cannot fail to see that Tom Brown was a very 
fine fellow, and that, although he had the misfortune to be at Rugby, 
they can hardly do better than to follow his examples in several par- 
ticulars. ■ "Edinburgh Review." 



Chapters from "Tom Brown's School-Days at Rugby" 

The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and 
Tom got in early and took his place in the lowest row, and 
watched all the other boys come in and take their places, fill- 
ing row after row ; he tried to construe the Greek text which 
was inscribed over the door with the slightest possible success, 
and wondered which of the masters, who walked down the 
chapel and took their seats in the exalted boxes at the end, 
would be his lord. And then came the closing of the doors, 
and the Doctor ^ in his robes, and the service, which, however, 
didn't impress him much, for his feeling of wonder and curios- 
ity was too strong. And the boy on one side of him was scratch- 
ing his name on the oak paneling in front, and he couldn't 
help watching to see what the name was, and whether it was 
well scratched ; and the boy on the other side went to sleep and 
kept falling against him ; and on the whole, though many boys 
even in that part of the school, were serious and attentive, the 
general atmosphere was by no means devotional ; and when he 
got into the close again, he didn't feel at all comfortable, or as 
if he had been to church. 

But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing. He had 
spent the time after dinner writing home to his mother, and so 
was in a better frame of mind ; and his first curiosity was over, 
and he could attend more to the service. As the hymn after 
the prayers was being sung, and the chapel was getting a little 
dark, he was beginning to feel that he had been really worship- 

' Dr. Thomas Arnold, Head-master of the school of Rugby 



280 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

ing. And then came the great event in his life, as in every 
Rugby boy's life of that day — the first sermon from the Doctor. 

More worthy pens than mine have described that scene. The 
oak pulpit standing out by itself above the school seats. The 
tall, gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the 
low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the 
light infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after Sun- 
day, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of right- 
eousness and love and glory, with whose spirit he was filled, 
and in whose power he spoke. The long lines of young faces 
rising tier above tier down the whole length of the chapel, from 
the little boy's who had just left his mother to the young man's 
who was going out next week into the great world rejoicing in 
his strength. It was a great and solemn sight, and never more 
so than at this time of year, when the only lights in the chapel 
were in the pulpit and at the seats of the prsepostors of the 
week, and the soft twilight stole over the rest of the chapel, 
deepening into darkness in the high gallery behind the organ. 

But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three 
hundred boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or 
unwilling, for twenty minutes, on Sunday afternoons ? True, 
there always were boys scattered uj^ and down the school who 
in heart and head were worthy to hear and able to carry away 
the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But these were a 
minority always, generally a very small one, often so small a 
one as to be countable on the fingers of your hand. What was 
it that moved and held us, the rest of the three hundred reck- 
less, childish boys, who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, 
and very little besides in heaven or earth : who thought more 
of our sets in the school than of the Church of Christ, and put 
the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our 
daily life above the laws of God ? We couldn't enter into half 
that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts 
or the knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, 
hope, and love needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys 
in their better moods will listen (aye, and men too, for the mat- 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 281 

ter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart, 
and soul, and strength, striving against whatever was mean, 
and unmanly, and unrighteous in our little world. It was not 
the cold clear voice of one giving advice and warning from 
serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, 
but the warm living voice of one who was fighting for us and 
by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and 
one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely 
and steadily, on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, 
for the first time, the meaning of his life, — that it was no fool's 
or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, 
but a battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spec- 
tators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are 
life and death. 

And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them 
at the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by 
his whole daily life, how that battle was to be fought, and stood 
there before them their fellow-soldier and the captain of their 
band. The true sort of captain, too, for a boy's army, one who 
had no misgivings and gave no uncertain word of command, 
and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight the fight 
out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of blood. 
Other sides of his character might take hold of and influence 
boys here and there, but it was this thoroughness and undaunted 
courage which, more than anything else, won his way to the 
hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and 
made them believe first in him, and then in his Master. 

It was this quality above all others which moved such boys 
as our hero, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him 
except excess of boyishness, by which I mean animal life in its 
fullest measure, good nature and honest impulses, hatred of 
injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a 
three-decker. And so, during the next two years, in which it 
was more than doubtful whether he would get good or evil 
from the school, and before any steady purpose or principle 
grew up in him, whatever his week's sins and shortcomings 



282 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

might have been, he hardly ever left the chapel on Sunday 
evenings without a serious resolve to stand by and follow the 
Doctor, and a feeling that it was only cowardice (the incarna- 
tion of all other sins in such a boy's mind) which hindered hini 
from doing so with all his heart. 

The lower-fourth form,^ in which Tom found himself at the 
beginning of the next half-year, was the largest form in the 
lower school, and numbered upwards of forty boys. Young 
gentlemen of all ages, from nine to fifteen, were to be found 
there, who expended such part of their energies as was devoted 
to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the Bucolics of 
Virgil, and the Hecuba of Euripides, which were ground out 
in small daily portions. The driving of this unlucky fourth 
must have been grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it 
was the most unhappily constituted of any in the school. Here 
stuck the great stupid boys, who for the life of them could 
never master the accidence ; the objects alternately of mirth 
and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking them up, 
and laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them 
for so doing in play-hours. There were no less than three un- 
happy fellows in tail-coats, with incipient down on their chins, 
whom the Doctor and the master of the form were always en- 
deavoring to hoist into the upper school, but whose parsing 
and construing resisted the most well-meant shoves. Then 
came the mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the most 
mischievous and reckless age of British youth, of whom East 
and Tom Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as 
monkeys, and of excuses as Irish women, making fun of their 
master, one another, and their lessons, Argus himself would 
have been puzzled to keep an eye on them ; and as for making 
them steady or serious for half an hour together, it was simply 
hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young prod- 
igies of nine and ten, who were going up the school at the rate 
of a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUGBY 283 

them in their progress. It would ]iave been one man's work 
to see that the precocious youngsters had fair play ; and as the 
master had a good deal besides to do, they hadn't, and were 
forever being shoved down three or four places, their verses 
stolen, their books inked, their jackets whitened, and their lives 
otherwise made a burden to them. 

The lower fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in 
the great school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons 
before coming in, but were whipped into school three quarters 
of an hour before the lesson began by their respective masters; 
and there, scattered about on the benches, with dictionary and 
grammar, hammered out their twenty lines of Virgil and 
Euripides in the midst of Babel. The masters of the lower 
school walked up and down the great school together during 
the three quarters of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or 
looking over copies, and keeping such order as was possible. 
But the lower fourth was just now an overgrown form, too 
large for any one man to attend to properly, and consequently 
the elysium or ideal form of the young scapegraces who formed 
the staple of it. 

Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a 
good character, but the temptations of the lower fourth soon 
proved too strong for him, and he rapidly fell away, and be- 
came as unmanageable as the rest. For some weeks, indeed, he 
succeeded in maintaining the appearance of steadiness, and was 
looked upon favorably by his new master, whose eyes were first 
opened by the following little incident : 

Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there 
was another large unoccupied desk in the corner of the great 
school, which was untenanted. To rush and seize upon this desk, 
which was ascended by three steps, and held four boys, was the 
great object of ambition of the lower fourthers ; and the conten- 
tions for the occupation of it bred such disorder, that at last the 
master forbade its use altogether. This of course was a chal- 
lenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it, and as it 
was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there completely^ 



284 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

it was seldom that it remained empty, notwithstanding the 
veto. Small holes were cut in the front, through which the 
occupants watched the masters as they walked up and down, 
and as lesson time approached, one boy at a time stole out and 
down the steps, as the masters' backs were turned, and mingled 
with the general crowd on the forms below. Tom and East 
had successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and 
were grown so reckless that they were in the habit of playing 
small games with fives'-balls inside, when the masters were at 
the other end of the big school. One day as ill luck would 
have it, the game became more exciting than usual, and the 
ball slipped through East's fingers and rolled slowly down the 
steps, and out into the middle of the school, just as the masters 
turned in their walk and faced round upon the desk. The 
young delinquents watched their master through the look-out 
holes march slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, 
while all the boys in the neighborhood of course stopped their 
work to look on ; and not only were they ignominiously drawn 
out, and caned over the head then and there, but their charac- 
ters for steadiness were gone from that time. However, as they 
only shared the fate of some three fourths of the rest of the 
form, this did not weigh heavily upon them. 

In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the 
matter were the monthly examinations, when the Doctor came 
round to examine their form, for one long awful hour, in the 
work which they had done in the preceding month. The 
second monthly examination came round soon after Tom's fall, 
and it was with anything but lively anticipations that he and 
the other lower-fourth boys came into prayers on the morning 
of the examination day. 

Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and 
before they could get construes of a tithe of the hard passages 
marked in the margin of their books, they were all seated 
round, and the Doctor was standing in the middle, talking in 
whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a word which 
passed, and never lifted his eyes from his book ; but he knew 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUOBT 285 

by a sort of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under lip was 
coming out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his gown get- 
ting gathered up more and more tightly in his left hand. The 
suspense was agonizing, and Tom knew that he was sure on 
such occasions to make an example of the schoolhouse boys. 
" If he would only begin," thought Tom, " I shouldn't mind." 

At last the whispering ceased, and the name which was called 
out was not Brown. He looked up for a moment, but the 
Doctor's face was too awful ; Tom wouldn't have met his eye 
for all he was worth, and buried himself in his book again. 

The boy who was called up first was a clever, merry school- 
house boy, one of their set ; he was some connection of the 
Doctor's, and a great favorite, and ran in and out of his house 
as he liked, and so was selected for the first victim. 

" Triste lupus stabulis,'^'^ began the luckless youngster, and 
stammered through some eight or ten lines. 

" There, that will do," said the Doctor. " Now construe." 

On common occasions the boy could have construed the 
passage well enough probably, but now his head was gone. 

" Triste lupus, — the sorrowful wolf," he began. 

A shudder ran through the whole form and the Doctor's wrath 
fairly boiled over ; he made three steps up to the construer, and 
gave him a good box on the ear. The blow was not a hard 
one, but the boy was so taken by surprise that he started back ; 
the form ^ caught the back of his knees, and over he went on 
the floor behind. There was a dead silence over the whole 
school ; never before and never again while Tom was at school 
did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson. The provocation must 
have been great. However, the victim had saved his form for 
that occasion, for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put 
on the best boys for the rest of the hour ; and though at the 
end of the lesson he gave them all such a rating as they did 
not forget, this terrible field-day passed over without any severe 

' The wolf is fatal to the flock. The word triste (fatal) may also mean ' ' sor- 
rowful. " 
- bench 



286 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

visitations in the shape of punishments or floggings. Forty- 
young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the " sorrowful 
wolf" in their different ways before second lesson. 

But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recov- 
ered, as Tom found, and for years afterwards he went up the 
school without it, and the masters' hands were against him, and 
his against them. And he regarded them, as a matter of course, 
as his natural enemies. 

Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they 
had been, for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others 
of the sixth-form boys at the following Easter. Their rule had 
been rough, but strong and just in the main, and a higher 
standard was beginning to be set up ; in fact, there had been 
a short foretaste of the good time which followed some years 
later. Just now, however, all threatened to return into dark- 
ness and chaos again ; for the new praepostors were either small 
young boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the top 
of the school, while in strength of body and character they were 
not yet fit for a share in the government; or else big fellows of 
the wrong sort, boys whose friendships and tastes had a down- 
ward tendency, who had not caught the meaning of their posi- 
tion and work, and felt none of its responsibilities. So under 
this no-government the schoolhouse began to see bad times. 
The big fifth-form hoys, who were a sporting and drinking set, 
soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they 
were prsepostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed 
signs of resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just 
described soon made common cause with the fifth, while the 
smaller sort, hampered by their colleagues' desertion to the 
enemy, could not make head against them. So the fags were 
without their lawful masters and protectors, and ridden over 
rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound to obey, 
and whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers ; 
and, as old Brooke had prophesied, the house by degrees broke 
up into small sects and parties, and lost the strong feeling of 
fellowship which he set so much store by, and with it much of 



TOM BBOWM^S SCBOOL-DAYS AT BUGBY 287 

the prowess in games, and the lead in all school matters, which 
he had done so much to keep up. 

In no place in the world has individual character more weight 
than at a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you 
boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in 
all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influ- 
ence for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever 
can have again. Quit yourselves like men, then; speak up, 
and strike out if necessary for whatsoever is true and manly 
and lovely and of good report ; never try to be popular, but 
only to do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you may 
leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found 
it, and so be doing good, which no living soul can measure, to 
generations of your countrymen yet unborn. 

But now came on the May-fly season ; the soft hazy summer 
weather lay sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and 
the green and gray flies flickered with their graceful, lazy, up 
and down flight over the reeds and the water and the meadows, 
in myriads upon myriads. The May -flies must surely be the 
lotus-eaters of the ephemerae — ^the happiest, laziest, carelessest 
fly that dances and dreams out his few hours of sunshiny life 
by English rivers. 

Every little pitiful coarse fisn in the Avon was on the alert 
for the flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds 
daily, the gluttonous rogues ! and every lover of the gentle 
craft was out to avenge the poor May-flies. 

So one fine Thursday afternoon Tom, having borrowed East's 
new rod, started by himself to the river. He fished for some 
time with small success ; not a fish woiild rise at him ; but, as 
he prowled along the bank, he was presently aware of mighty 
ones feeding in a pool on the opposite side, under the shade of 
a huge willow-tree. The stream was deep here, but some fifty 
yards below was a shallow for which he made off hot-foot ; and 
forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the Doctor, 
and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and 



288 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

in three minutes was creeping along on all-fours towards the 
clump of willows. 

It isn't often that great chub or any other coarse fish are in 
earnest about anything, but just then they were thoroughly 
bent on feeding, and in half an hour Master Tom had deposited 
three thumping fellows at the foot of the giant willow. As he 
was baiting for a fourth pounder, and just going to throw in 
again, he became aware of a man coming up the bank not one 
hundred yards off. Another look told him that it was the un- 
der-keeper. Could he reach the shallow before him ? No, not 
carrying his rod. Nothing for it but the tree, so Tom laid his 
bones to it, shinning up as fast as he could, and dragging up 
his rod after him. He had just time to reach and crouch along 
upon a huge branch some ten feet up, which stretched out over 
the river, when the keeper arrived at the clump. Tom's heart 
beat fast as he came under the tree ; two steps more and he 
would have passed, when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleam 
on the scales of the dead fish caught his eye, and he made a 
dead point at the foot of the tree. He picked up the fish one 
by one ; his eye and touch told him that they had been alive 
and feeding within the hour. Tom crouched lower along the 
branch, and heard the keeper beating the clump. " If I could 
only get the rod hidden," thought he, and began gently shift- 
ing it to get it alongside him ; " willow trees don't throw out 
straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse 
luck." Alas ! the keeper catches the rustle, and then a sight of 
the rod, and then of Tom's hand and arm. 

" Oh, be up thur, be 'ee?" says he running under the tree. 
" Now you come down this minute." 

" Treed at last," thinks Tom, making no answer, and keep- 
ing as close as possible, but working away at the rod, which he 
takes to pieces : " I'm in for it, unless I can starve him out." 
And then he begins to meditate getting along the branch for a 
plunge and scramble to the other side ; but the small branches 
are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult, that the keeper 
will have lots of time to get round by the ford before he can get 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUGBY 289 

out, so he gives that up. And now he hears the keeper begin- 
ning to scramble up the trunk. That will never do; so he 
scrambles himself back to where his branch joins the trunk, 
and stands with lifted rod. 

" Hullo, Velveteens ! Mind your fingers if you come any 
higher." 

The keeper stops and looks up, and then with a grin sa3's, 
"Oh! be you, be it, young measter? Well, here's luck. 
Now I tells 'ee to come down at once, and 't'll be best for 
'ee." 

" Thank 'ee, Velveteens, I'm very comfortable," said Tom, 
shortening the rod in his hand, and preparing for battle. 

" Werry well, please yourself," says the keeper, descending 
however to the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank ; 
" I bean't in no hurry, so you med take your time. I'll larn 
'ee to gee honest folk names afore I've done with 'ee." 

" My luck as usual," thinks Tom ; " what a fool I was to give 
him a black. If I'd called him ' keeper,' now, I might get off. 
The return match is all his way." 

The keeper quietly proceeded to take out his pipe, fill and 
light it, keeping an eye on Tom, who now sat disconsolately 
across the branch, looking at the keeper — a pitiful sight for men 
and fishes. The more he thought of it the less he liked it. " It 
must be getting near second calling-over," thinks he. Keeper 
smokes on stolidl}^ " If he takes me up, I shall be flogged safe 
enough. I can't sit here all night. Wonder if he'll rise at 
silver." 

" I say, keeper," said he meekly, " let me go for two bob ? " 

" Not for twenty neither," grunts his persecutor. 

And so they sat on till long past second calling-over, and 
telling of locking-up near at hand. 

" I'm coming down, keeper," said Tom at last, with a sigh, 
fairly tired out. " Now what are you going to do ? " 

" Walk 'ee up to school, and give 'ee over to the Doctor ; 
them's my orders," says A'^elveteens, knocking the ashes out of 
his fourth pipe, and standing up and shaking himself. 

S. M— 19 



290 THOMAS HtlGHES, M.P. 

" Very good," said Tom ; " but hands off, you know. I'll go 
with you quietly, so no collaring, or that sort of thing." 

Keeper looked at him a minute. " Werry good," said he at 
last ; and so Tom descended, and wended his way drearily by 
the side of the keeper up to the schoolhouse, where they 
arrived just at locking up. As they passed the school gates, the 
Tadpole, and several others who were standing there, caught 
the state of things, and rushed out, crying, " Rescue ! " but Tom 
shook his head, so they only followed to the Doctor's gate, and 
went back sorely puzzled. 

How changed and stern the Doctor seemed from the last time 
that Tom was up there, as the keeper told the story, not 
omitting to state how Tom had called him blackguard names. 
" Indeed, sir," broke in the culprit, " it was only Velveteens." 
The Doctor only asked one question. 

" You know the rule about the banks, Brown ? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" Then wait for me to-morrow, after first lesson." 

" I thought so," muttered Tom. 

" And about the rod, sir ? " went on the keeper ; " Master's 
told we as we might have all the rods " 

" Oh, please, sir," broke in Tom, " the rod isn't mine." The 
Doctor looked puzzled, but the keeper, who was a good-hearted 
fellow, and melted at Tom's evident distress, gave up his claim. 
Tom was flogged next morning, and a few daj^s afterwards met 
Velveteens, and presented him with half-a-crown for giving up 
the rod claim, and they became sworn friends ; and I regret to 
say that Tom had many more fish from under the willow that 
May-fly season, and was never caught again by Velveteens. 

It wasn't three weeks before Tom, and now East by his side, 
were again in the awful presence. This time, however, the 
Doctor was not so terrible. A few days before, they had been 
fagged at fives to fetch the balls that went off" the court. While 
standing watching the game, they saw five or six nearly new 
balls hit on the top of the school. " I say, Tom," said East, when 
they were dismissed, " couldn't we get those balls somehow ? " 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUGBT 291 

" Let's try, anyhow." 

So they reconnoitered the walls carefully, borrowed a coal 
hammer from old Stumps, bought some big nails, and after one 
or two attempts, scaled the school, and possessed themselves of 
huge quantities of fives'-balls. The place pleased them so 
much that they spent all their spare time there, scratching and 
cutting their names on the top of every tower ; and at last, hav- 
ing exhausted all other places, finished up with inscribing, H. 
East, T. Brown, on the minute-hand of the great clock, in the 
doing of which they held the minute-hand, and disturbed the 
clock's economy. So next morning, when master and boys 
came trooping down to prayers, and entered the quadrangle, 
the injured minute-hand was indicating three minutes to the 
hour. They all pulled up, and took their time. When the 
hour struck, doors were closed, and half the school late. 
Thomas being set to make inquiry, discovers their names on 
the minute-hand, and reports accordingly ; and they are sent 
for, a knot of their friends making derisive and pantomimic 
allusions to what their fate would be, as they walk off. 

But the Doctor, after hearing their story, doesn't make much 
of it, and only gives them thirty lines of Homer to learn by 
heart, and a lecture on the likelihood of such exploits ending in 
broken bones. 

Alas ! almost the next day was one of the great fairs in the 
town; and as several rows and other disagreeable accidents 
had of late taken place on these occasions, the Doctor gives out, 
after prayers in the morning, that no boy is to go down into 
the town. Wherefore East and Tom, for no earthly pleasure 
except that of doing what they were told not to do, start away, 
after second lesson, and making a short circuit through the 
fields, strike a back lane which leads into the town, go down it, 
and run plump upon one of the masters as they emerge into 
the High Street. The master in question, though a very clever, 
is not a righteous man : he has already caught several of his 
own pupils, and gives them lines to learn, while he sends East 
and Tom, who are not his pupils, up to the Doctor, who, on 



292 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

learning that they had been at prayers in the morning, flogs 
them soundly. 

The flogging did them no good at the time, for the injustice 
of their captor was rankling in their minds ; but it was just the 
end of the half, and on the next evening but one Thomas 
knocks at their door, and says the Doctor wants to see them. 
They look at one another in silent dismay. What can it be 
now? Which of their countless wrong-doings can he have 
heard of officially ? However, it's no use delaying, so up they 
go to the study. There they find the Doctor, not angry, but very 
grave. " He has sent for them to speak very seriously before 
they go home. They have each been flogged several times in 
the half-year for direct and willful breaches of rules. This 
cannot go on. They are doing no good to themselves or 
others, and now they are getting up in the school, and have 
influence. They seem to think that rules are made capri- 
ciously, and for the pleasure of the masters ; but this is not so — 
they are for the good of the whole school, and must and shall 
be obeyed. Those who thoughtlessly or willfully break them 
will not be allowed to stay at the school. He should be sorry 
if they had to leave, as the school might do them both much 
good, and wishes them to think very seriously in the holidays 
over what he has said. Good-night." 

And so the two hurry off horribly scared : the idea of having 
to leave has never crossed their minds, and is quite unbearable. 

As they go out, they meet at the door old Holmes, a sturdy, 
cheery praepostor of another house, who goes in to the Doctor ; 
and they hear his genial hearty greeting of the new-comer, so 
different from their own reception, as the door closes, and return 
to their study with heavy hearts, and tremendous resolves to 
break no more rules. 

Five minutes afterwards the master of their form, a late 
arrival and a model young master, knocks at the Doctor's study 
door. " Come in ! " and as he enters, the Doctor goes on to 
Holmes — " you see I do not know anything of the case offi- 
cially, and if I take any notice of it at all, I must publicly 



TOM BBOWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 293 

expel the boy. I don't wish to do that, for I think there is 
some good in him. There's nothing for it but a good sound 
thrashing." He paused to shake hands with the master, which 
Holmes does also, and then prepares to leave. 

" I understand. Good-night, sir." 

" Good-night, Holmes. And remember," added the Doctor, 
emphasizing the words, " a good sound thrashing before the 
whole house." 

The door closed on Holmes ; and the Doctor, in answer to 
the puzzled look of his lieutenant, explained shortly. "A 
gross case of bullying. Wharton, the head of the house, is a 
very good fellow, but slight and weak, and severe physical pain 
is the only way to deal with such a case ; so I have asked 
Holmes to take it up. He is very careful and trustworthy, and 
has plent}'' of strength. I wish all the sixth had as much. We 
must have it here, if we are to keep order at all." 

Now I don't want any wiseacres to read this book; but if 
they should, of course they will prick up their long ears, and 
howl, or rather bray, at the above story. Very good, I don't 
object ; but what I have to add for you boys is this, that 
Holmes called a levy of his house after breakfast next morn- 
ing, made them a speech on the case of bullying in question, 
and then gave the bully a " good sound thrashing ; " and that 
years afterwards, that boy sought out Holmes, and thanked 
him, saying it had been the kindest act which had ever been 
done upon him, and the turning-point in his character ; and a 
very good fellow he became, and a credit to his school. 

After some other talk between them, the Doctor said, " I want 
to speak to you about two boys in your form, East and Brown : 
I have just been speaking to them. What do you think of 
•them?" 

" Well, they are not hard workers, and very thoughtless and 
full of spirits ; but I can't help liking them. I think they are 
sound, good fellows at the bottom." 

" I'm glad of it. I think so too. But they make me very 
uneasy. They are taking the lead a good deal amongst the 



294 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

fags in my house, for they are very active, bold fellows. I 
should be very sorry to lose them, but I shan't let them stay if 
I don't see them gaining character and manliness. In another 
year they may do great harm to all the younger boys." 

" Oh, I hope you won't send them away," pleaded their 
master. 

" Not if I can help it. But now I never feel sure, after any 
half-holiday, that I shan't have to flog one of them next morn- 
ing, for some foolish, thoughtless scrape. I quite dread seeing 
either of them." 

They were both silent for a minute. Presently the Doctor 
began again : 

" They don't feel that they have any duty or work to do in 
the school, and how is one to make them feel it ? " 

" I think if either of them had some little boy to take care of, 
it would steady them. Brown is the more reckless of the two, I 
should say ; East wouldn't get into so many 'scrapes without 
him." 

" Well," said the Doctor, with something like a sigh, " I'll 
think of it." And they went on to talk of other subjects. 

Another two years have passed, and it is again the end of the 
summer half-year at Rugby ; in fact, the school has broken up. 
The fifth-form examinations were over last week, and upon 
them have followed the speeches, and the sixth-form examina- 
tions for exhibitions ; and they too are over now. The boys 
have gone to all the winds of heaven, except the town boys 
and the eleven, and the few enthusiasts besides who have asked 
leave to stay in their houses to see the result of the cricket 
matches. For this year the Wellesburn return match and the 
Marylebone match are played at Rugby, to the great delight of- 
the town and neighborhood, and the sorrow of those aspiring 
young cricketers who have been reckoning for the last three 
months on showing off at Lords' ground. 

The Doctor started for the Lakes yesterday morning, after an 
interview with the captain of the eleven, in the presence of 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 295 

Thomas, at which he arranged in what school the cricket din- 
ners were to be, and all other matters necessary for the satis- 
factory carrying out of the festivities ; and warned them as to 
keeping all spirituous liquors out of the close, and having the 
gates closed by nine o'clock. 

There is much healthy, hearty, happy life scattered up and 
down the close ; but the group to which I beg to call joui espe- 
cial attention is there, on the slope of the island, which looks 
towards the cricket-ground. It consists of three figures ; two 
are seated on a bench, and one on the ground at their feet. 
The first, a tall, slight, and rather gaunt man, with a bushy 
eyebrow, and a dr}--, humorous smile, is evidently a clergyman. 
He is carelessly dressed, and looks rather used up, which isn't 
much to be wondered at, seeing that he has just finished six 
weeks of examination work ; but there he basks, and spreads 
himself out in the evening sun, bent on enjoying life, though he 
doesn't quite know what to do with his arms and legs. Surely 
it is our friend the young master, whom we have had glimpses 
of before, but his face has gained a great deal since we last came 
across him. 

And by his side, in white flannel shirt and trousers, straw 
hat,_the captain's belt, and the untanned yellow cricket shoes 
which all the eleven wear, sits a strapping figure, nearly six 
feet high, with ruddy tanned face and whiskers, curly brown 
hair, and a laughing, dancing eye. He is leaning forward with 
his elbows resting on his knees, and dandling his favorite bat, 
with which he has made thirty or forty runs to-day, in his 
strong brown hands. It is Tom Brown, grown into a young 
man nineteen years old, a praepostor and captain of the eleven, 
spending his last day as a Rugby-boy, and let us hope as much 
wiser as he is bigger, since we last had the pleasure of coming 
across him. 

And at their feet on the- warm dry ground, similarly dressed, 
sits Arthur, Turkish fashion, with his bat across his knees. He 
too is no longer a boy, less of a boy in fact than Tom, if one may 



296 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

judge from the though tfulness of his face, which is somewhat 
paler, too, than one could wish ; but his figure, though slight, is 
well-knit and active, and all his old timidity has disappeared, 
and is replaced by silent quaint fun, with which his face 
twinkles all over, as he listens to the broken talk between the 
other two, in which he joins every now and then. 

All three are watching the game eagerly, and joining in the 
cheering which follows every good hit. It is pleasing to see the 
easy friendly footing which the pupils are on with their master, 
perfectly respectful, yet with no reserve and nothing forced in 
their intercourse. Tom has clearly abandoned the old theory 
of " natural enemies," in this case at any rate. 

But it is time to listen to what they are saying, and see what 
we can gather out of it. 

" Oh, Brown, mayn't I go in next ? " shouts the swiper. 

" Whose name is next on the list ? " says the captain. 

" Winter's, and then Arthur's," answers the boy who carries 
it ; " but there's only twenty-six runs to get, and no time to lose. 
I heard Mr. Aislabie say that the stumps must be drawn at a 
quarter past eight exactly." 

" Oh, do let the Swiper go in," chorus the boys ; so Tom 
yielded against his better judgment. 

" I dare say now I've lost the match by this nonsense," he 
says, as he sits down again ; " they'll be sure to get Jack's 
wicket in three or four minutes ; however, you'll have the 
chance, sir, of seeing a hard hit or two," adds he, smiling, and 
turning to the master. 

" Come, none of your irony, Brown," answers the master. 
" I'm beginning to understand the game scientifically. What a 
noble game it is too ! " 

" Isn't it ? But it's more than a game — it's an institution," 
said Tom. 

" Yes," said Arthur, " the birthright of British boys, old 
and young, as habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British 
men." 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 297 

" The discipline and reliance on one another which it teaches 
is so valuable, I think," went on the master, " it ought to be 
such an unselfish game. It merges the individual in the 
eleven ; he doesn't play that he may win, but that his side 
may." 

" That's very true," said Tom, " and that's why football and 
cricket, now one comes to think of it, are so much better games 
than fives' or hare-and-hounds, or any other, where the object 
is to come in first or to win for one's self, and not that one's 
side may Avin." 

" And then the captain of the eleven ! " said the master, 
" what a post is his in our school world ! almost as hard as the 
Doctor's ; requiring skill and gentleness and firmness, and I 
know not what other rare qualities." 

" Which don't he wish he may get ? " said Tom, laughing ; 
" at any rate, he hasn't got them yet, or he wouldn't have been 
such a flat to-night as to let Jack Raggles go in out of his 
turn." 

'' Ah ! the Doctor never would have done that," said Arthur, 
demurely. " Tom, you've a great deal to learn yet in the art of 
ruling." 

" Well, I wish you'd tell the Doctor so, then, and get him to 
let me stop till I'm twenty. I don't want to leave, I'm sure." 

" What a sight it is," broke in the master, "the Doctor as a 
ruler. Perhaps ours is the only little corner of the British 
empire which is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled just 
now. I'm more and more thankful every day of my life that I 
came here to be under him." 

" So am I, I'm sure," said Tom ; " and more and more sorry 
that I've got to leave." 

'* Every place and thing one sees here reminds one of some 
wise act of his," went on the master. " This island now — you 
remember the time. Brown, when it was laid out in small 
gardens, and cultivated by frost-bitten fags in February and 
March?" 

" Of course I do," said Tom ; " didn't I hate spending two 



298 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

hours in the afternoons grubbing in the tough dirt with the 
stump of a fives'-bat ? But turf-cart was good fun enough." 

" I dare say it was, but it was always leading to fights with 
the townspeople ; and then the stealing flowers out of all the 
gardens in Rugby for the Easter show was abominable." 

" Well, so it was," said Tom, looking down, " but we fags 
couldn't help ourselves. But what has that to do with the 
Doctor's ruling ? " 

" A great deal, I think," said the master ; " what brought 
island-fagging to an end ? " 

" Why, the Easter speeches were put off till midsummer," 
said Tom, "and the sixth had the gymnastic poles put up here." 

'' Well, and who changed the time of the speeches, and put 
the idea of gymnastic poles into the heads of their worships the 
sixth form ? " said the master. 

" The Doctor, I suppose," said Tom. " I never thought of 
that." 

" Of course you didn't," said the master, " or else, fag as you 
were, you would have shouted with the whole school against put- 
ting down old customs. And that's the way that all the Doctor's 
reforms have been carried out when he has been left to him- 
self — quietly and naturally, putting a good thing in the place 
of a bad, and letting the bad die out ; no wavering and no 
hurry — the best thing that could be done for the time being, 
and patience for the rest." - 

"Just Tom's own way," chimed in Arthur, nudging Tom 
with his elbow, " driving a nail where it will go," to which allu- 
sion Tom answered by a sly kick. 

" Exactly so," said the master, innocent of the allusion and 
by-play. 

As Tom and the rest of the eleven were turning back into 
the close, and everybody was beginning to cry out for another 
country-dance, encouraged by the success of the night before, 
the young master, who was just leaving the close, stopped him, 
and asked him to come up to tea at half-past eight, adding, " I 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 299 

won't keep you more than half an hour, and ask Arthur to 
come up too." 

" I'll come up with you directly, if you'll let me," said Tom, 
" for I feel rather melancholy, and not quite up to the country- 
dance and supper with the rest." 

" Do by all means," said the master ; " I'll wait here for 
you." 

So Tom went off to get his boots and things from the tent, 
to tell Arthur of the invitation, and to speak to his second in 
command about stopping the dancing and shutting up the 
close as soon as it grew dusk. Arthur promised to follow 
as soon as he had a dance. So Tom handed his things over 
to the man in charge of the tent, and walked quietly away to 
the gate where the master was waiting, and the two took their 
way together up the Hillmorton road. 

Of course they found the master's house locked up, and all 
the servants away in the close, about this time, no doubt footing 
it away on the grass with extreme delight to themselves, and in 
utter oblivion of the unfortunate bachelor their master, whose 
one enjoyment in the shape of meals was his "dish of tea " (as 
our grandmothers called it) in the evening; and the phrase 
was apt in his case, for he always poured his out into the saucer 
before drinking. Great was the good man's horror at finding 
himself shut out of his own house. Had he been alone he 
would have treated it as a matter of course, and would have 
strolled contentedly up and down his gravel-walk until some 
one came home ; but he was hurt at the stain on his character 
of host, especially as the guest was a pupil. However, the guest 
seemed to think it a great joke, and j)resently, as they poked 
about round the house, mounted a wall, from which he could 
reach a passage window : the window, as it turned out, was not 
bolted, so in another minute Tom was in the house and down 
at the front door, which he opened from inside. The master 
chuckled grimly at this burglarious entry, and insisted on 
leaving the hall-door and two of the front windows open to 
frighten the truants on their return; and then the two set 



300 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

about foraging for tea, in which operation the master was much 
at fault, having the faintest possible idea of where to find 
anything, and being, moreover, wondrously short-sighted ; but 
Tom by a sort of instinct knew the right cupboards in the 
kitchen and pantry, and soon managed to place on the snug- 
gery table better materials for a meal than had appeared there 
probably during the reign of his tutor, who was then and there 
initiated, amongst other things, into the excellence of that mys- 
terious condiment, a dripping-cake. The cake was newly baked, 
and all rich and flaky; Tom had found it reposing in the 
cook's private cupboard, awaiting her return ; and as a warning 
to her they finished it to the last crumb. The kettle sang away 
merrily on the hob of the snuggery, for, notwithstanding the 
time of year, they lighted a fire, throwing both the windows 
wide open at the same time ; the heap of books and papers were 
pushed away to the other end of the table, and the great solitary 
engraving of King's College Chapel over the mantelpiece looked 
less stifl" than usual, as they settled themselves down in the 
twilight to the serious drinking of tea. 

After some talk on the match, and other different subjects, 
the conversation came naturally back to Tom's approaching 
departure, over which he began again to make his moan. 

" Well, we shall all miss you quite as much as you will miss 
us," said the master. " You are the Nestor of the school now, 
are you not ? " 

" Yes, ever since East left," answered Tom. 

" By the bye, have you heard from him ? " 

" Yes, I had a letter in February just before he started for 
India to join his regiment." 

" He will make a capital officer." 

" Ay, won't he ! " said Tom brightening ; " no fellow could 
handle boys better, and I suppose soldiers are very like boys. 
And he'll never tell them to go where he won't go himself. No 
mistake about that — a braver fellow never walked." 

" His year in the sixth will have taught him a good deal 
that will be useful to him now." 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUGBT 301 

" So it will," said Tom, staring into the fire. " Poor, dear 
Harry," he went on, " how well I remember the day we were 
put out of the twenty. How he rose to the situation, and 
burned his cigar-cases, and gave away his pistols, and pondered 
on the constitutional authority of the sixth, and his new duties 
to the Doctor, and the fifth form and the fags. Ay, and no 
fellow ever acted up to them better, though he was always a 
people's man — for the fags, and against constituted authorities. 
He couldn't help that, you know. I'm sure the Doctor must 
have liked him ? " said Tom, looking uj) inquiringly. 

" The Doctor sees the good in every one, and appreciates it," 
said the master, dogmatically ; " but I hope East will get a good 
colonel. He won't do if he can't respect those above him. 
How long it took him even here to learn the lesson of obey- 
ing." 

" Well, I wish I were alongside of him," said Tom. " If I 
can't be at Rugby, I want to be at work in the world, and not 
dawdling away three years at Oxford." 

" What do you mean by ' at work in the world ' ? " said the 
master, pausing, with his lips close to his saucerful of tea, and 
peering at Tom over it. 

" Well, I mean real work — one's profession ; whatever one 
will have really to do, and make one's living by. I want to be 
doing some real good, feeling that I am not only at play in 
the world," answered Tom, rather puzzled to find out himself 
what he really did mean. 

" You are mixing up two very different things in your head, 
I think, Brown," said the master, putting down the empty saucer, 
" and you ought to get clear about them. You talk of ' work- 
ing to get your living ' and ' doing some real good in the world ' 
in the same breath. Now, you may be getting a very good liv- 
ing in a profession and yet doing no good at all in the world, 
but quite the contrary, at the same time. Keep the latter before 
you as your one object, and you will be right, whether you 
make a living or not ; but if you dwell on the other, you'll 
very likely drop into mere money-making, and let the world 



302 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

take care of itself for good or evil. Don't be in a hurry about 
finding your work in the world for yourself; you are not old 
enough to judge for yourself yet, but just look about you in the 
place you find yourself in, and try to make things a little bet- 
ter and honester there. You'll find plenty to keep your hand 
in at Oxford, or wherever else you go. And don't be led away 
to think this part of the world important and that unimportant. 
Every corner of the world is important. No man knows 
whether this part or that is most so, but every man may do 
some honest work in his own corner." And then the good man 
went on to talk wisely to Tom of the sort of work which he 
might take up as an undergraduate, warned him of the prev- 
alent university sins, and explained to him the many and 
great differences between university and school life, till the 
twilight changed into darkness, and they heard the truant serv- 
ant stealing in by the back entrance. 

" I wonder where Arthur can be," said Tom at last, looking 
at his watch ; " why, it's nearly half-past nine already." 

" Oh, he is comfortably at supper with the eleven, forgetful 
of his oldest friends," said the master. " Nothing has given me 
greater pleasure," he went on, "than your friendship for him; 
it has been the making of you both." 

" Of me, at any rate," answered Tom ; " I should never have 
been here now but for him. It was the luckiest chance in the 
world that sent him to Rugby, and made him my chum." 

" Why do you talk of lucky chances ? " said the master ; " I 
don't know that there are any such things in the world ; at any 
rate there was neither luck nor chance in that matter." 

Tom looked at him inquiringly, and he went on. " Do you 
remember when the Doctor lectured you and East at the end 
of one half-year, when you were in the shell, and had been get- 
ting into all sorts of scrapes ? " 

" Yes, well enough," said Tom ; " it was the half-year before 
Arthur came." 

" Exactly so," answered the master. " Now, I was with him 
a few minutes afterwards, and he was in great distress about 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUGBY 303 

you two. And, after some talk, we both agreed that you in 
particular wanted some object in the school beyond games and 
mischief; for it was quite clear thaj you never would make the 
regular school work your first object. And so the Doctor, at 
the beginning of the next half-year, looked out the best of the 
new boys, and separated you and East, and put the young boy 
into your study, in the hope that when you had somebody to 
lean on you, you would begin to stand a little steadier yourself, 
and get manliness and thoughtfulness. And I can assure you 
he has watched the experiment ever since with great satisfac- 
tion. Ah ! not One of you boys will ever know the anxiety you 
have given him, or the care with which he has watched over 
every step in your school lives." 

Up to this time, Tom had never wholly given in to or under- 
stood the Doctor. At first he had thoroughly feared him. For 
some years, as I have tried to show, he had learned to regard 
him with love and respect, and to think him a very great and 
wise and good man. But, as regarded his own position in the 
school, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea of 
giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was 
a very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was 
wont to boast that he had fought his own way fairly up the 
school, and had never made up to or been taken up by any big 
fellow or master, and that it was now quite a different place 
from what it was when he first came. And, indeed, though he 
didn't actually boast of it, in his secret soul he did to a great 
extent believe that the great reform of the school had been 
owing quite as much to himself as to any one else. Arthur, he 
acknowledged, had done him good, and taught him a good 
deal, so had other boys in different ways, but they had not had 
the same means of influence on the school in general; and as 
for the Doctor, why, he was a splendid master, but every one 
knew that masters could do very little out of school hours. In 
short, he felt on terms of equality with his chief, so far as the 
social state of the school was concerned, and thought that the 
Doctor would find it no easy matter to get on without him. 



304 THOMAS EUQHE8, M.P. 

Moreover, his school toryism was still strong, and he looked 
still with some jealousy on the Doctor, as somewhat of a fanatic 
in the matter of change, and thought it very desirable for the 
school that he should have some wise person (such as himsetf) 
to look sharply after vested school-rights, and see that nothing 
was done to the injury of the republic without due protest. 

It was a new light to him to find that, besides teaching the 
sixth, and governing and guiding the whole school, editing 
classics, and writing histories, the great head-master had found 
time in those busy years to watch over the career even of him, 
Tom Brown, and his particular friends, — and, no doubt, of fifty 
other boys at the same time ; and all this without taking the 
least credit to himself, or of seeming to know, or let any one 
else know, that he ever thought particularly of any boy at all. 

However, the Doctor's victory was complete from that mo- 
ment over Tom Brown at any rate. He gave way at all points, 
and the enemy marched right over him, cavalry, infantry and 
artillery, the land transport corps, and the camp followers. It 
had taken eight long years to do it, but now it was done thor- 
oughly, and there wasn't a corner of him left which didn't be- 
lieve in the Doctor. Had he returned to school again, and the 
Doctor begun the half-year by abolishing fagging and football 
and the Saturday half-holiday, or all or any of the most cherished 
school institutions, Tom would have supported him with the 
blindest faith. And so, after a half confession of his previous 
shortcomings, and sorrowful adieus to his tutor, from whom he 
received two beautifully-bound volumes of the Doctor's ser- 
mons, as a parting present, he marched down to the school- 
house, a hero-worshiper who would have satisfied the soul of 
Thomas Carlyle himself. 

In the summer of 1842, our hero stopped once again at the 
well-known station, and leaving his bag and fishing-rod with a 
porter, walked slowly and sadly up towards the town. It was 
now July. He had rushed away from Oxford the moment that 
term was over, for a fishing ramble in Scotland with two college 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT RUGBY 305 

friends, and had been for three weeks Kving on oat-cake, mut- 
ton-hams and whisky, in the wildest parts of Skye. They had 
descended one sultry evening on the little inn at Kyle Rhea 
ferry, and while Tom and another of the party put their tackle 
together and began exploring the stream for a sea-trout for 
supper, the third strolled into the house to arrange for their 
entertainment. Presently he came out in a loose blouse and 
slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and an old newspaper in 
his hand, and threw himself on the heathery scrub which met 
the shingle, within easy hail of the fishermen. There he lay, 
the picture of free-and-easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young Eng- 
land, " improving his mind," as he shouted to them, by the 
perusal of the fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the marks 
of toddy-glasses and tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last trav- 
eler, which he had hunted out from the kitchen of the little 
hostelry, and being a youth of a communicative turn of mind, 
began imparting the contents to the fishermen as he went on. 

" What a bother they are making about these wretched Corn- 
laws ; here's three or four columns full of nothing but sliding- 
scales and fixed duties. Hang this tobacco, it's always going 
out ! Ah, here's something better — a splendid match between 
Kent and England, Brown ! Kent winning by three wickets. 
Felix fifty-six runs without a chance, and not out ! " 

Tom, intent on a fish which had risen at him twice, answered 
only with a grunt. 

" Anything about the Goodwood ? " called out the third man. 

"Rory O'More drawn. Butterfly colt amiss," shouted the 
student. 

" Just my luck," grumbled the inquirer, jerking his flies off 
the water, and throwing again with a heavy, sullen splash, and 
frightening Tom's fish. 

" I say, can't you throw lighter over there ? we ain't fishing 
for grampuses," shouted Tom across the stream. 

" Hullo, Brown ! here's something for you," called out the 
reading man next moment. " Why, your old master, Arnold 
of Rugby, is dead." 
s. M.— 20 



806 THOMAS ETIQEm, M.P. 

Tom's hand stopped half way in his cast, and his Hnes and 
flies went all tangling round and round his rod ; you might 
have knocked him over with a feather. Neither of his com- 
panions took any notice of him, luckily ; and with a violent 
effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his line. He 
felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if 
he had lost his standing point in the invisible world. Besides 
which, the deep loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader 
made the shock intensely painful. It was the first great wrench 
of his life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in 
his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless. 
Well, well ! I believe it was good for him, and for many others 
in like case, who had to learn by that loss that the soul of man 
cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and 
wise, and good ; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and 
lean will knock away all such props in his own wise and merci- 
ful way, until there is no ground or stay left but Himself, the 
Rock of Ages, upon whom alone a sure foundation for every 
soul of man is laid. 

As he wearily labored at his line, the thought struck him, 
" It may all be false, a mere newspaper lie," and he strode up 
to the recumbent smoker. 

" Let me look at the paper," said he. 

" Nothing else in it," answered the other, handing it up to 
him listlessly. — "Hullo, Brown! what's the matter, old fellow — 
ain't you well ? " 

"Where is it?" said Tom, turning over the leaves, his hands 
trembling, and his eyes swimming, so that he could not read. 

" What ? What are you looking for ? " said his friend, jump- 
ing up and looking over his shoulder. 

" That— about Arnold," said Tom. 

" Oh, here," said the other, putting his finger on the para- 
graph. Tom read it over and over again ; there could be no 
mistake of identity, though the account was short enough. 

" Thank you," said he at last, dropping the paper. " I shall 
go for a walk: don't you and Herbert wait supper for me." 



I 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DATS AT BUGBY 307 

And away he strode, up over the moor at the back of the house, 
to be alone, and master his grief if j)ossible. 

His friend looked after him, sympathizing and wondering, 
and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, walked over to Her- 
bert. After a short parley, they walked together up to the 
house. 

" I'm afraid that confounded newspaper has spoiled Brown's 
fun for this trip." 

" How odd that he should be so fond of his old master," said 
Herbert. Yet they also were both public-school men. 

The two, however, notwithstanding Tom's prohibition, waited 
supper for him, and had everything ready when he came back 
some half an hour afterwards. But he could not join in their 
cheerful talk, and the party was soon silent, notwithstanding 
the efforts of all three. One thing onl}^ had Tom resolved, and 
that was, that he couldn't stay in Scotland any longer ; he felt 
an irresistible longing to get to Rugby, and then home, and 
soon broke it to the others, who had too much tact to oppose. 

So by daylight the next morning he was marching through 
Ross-shire, and in the evening hit the Caledonian canal, took 
the next steamer, and traveled as fast as boat and railway could 
carry him to the Rugby station. 

As he walked up to the town, he felt shy and afraid of being 
seen, and took the back streets ; why, he didn't know, but he 
followed his instinct. At the school-gates he made a dead 
pause ; there was not a soul in the quadrangle — all was lonely 
and silent and sad. So with another effort he strode through 
the quadrangle, and into the schoolhouse offices. 

He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning ; 
shook her hand, tried to talk, and moved nervously about. She 
was evidently thinking of the same subject as he, but he couldn't 
begin talking. 

" Where shall I find Thomas ? " said he at last, getting des- 
perate. 

" In the servants' hall, I think, sir. But won't you take any- 
thing ? " said the matron, looking rather disappointed. 



308 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

" No, thank you," said he, and strode off again, to find the 
old verger, who was sitting in his little den as of old, puzzling 
over hieroglyphics. 

He looked up through his spectacles, as Tom seized his hand 
and wrung it. 

" Ah ! you've heard all about it, sir, I see," said he. 

Tom nodded, and then sat down on the shoe-board, while the 
old man told his tale, and wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed 
over with quaint, homely, honest sorrow. 

By the time he had done, Tom felt much better. 

" Where is he buried, Thomas ? " said he at last. 

" Under the altar in the chapel, sir," answered Thomas. 
" You'd like to have the key, I dare say." 

" Thank you Thomas. — Yes, I should very much." And the 
old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up, as though 
he would go with him, but after a few steps, stopped short, and 
said, " Perhaps you'd like to go by yourself, sir ? " 

Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys was handed to him, 
with an injunction to be sure and lock the door after him, and 
bring them back before eight o'clock. 

He walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the 
close. The longing which had been upon him and driven him 
thus far, like the gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no 
rest in mind or bod}^, seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, 
but to shrivel up, and pall. " Why should I go on ? It's no 
use," he thought, and threw himself at full length on the turf, 
and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects. 
There were a few of the town boys playing cricket, their wicket 
pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground 
— a sin about equal to a sacrilege in the eyes of the captain of 
the eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send 
them off". " Pshaw ! they won't remember me. They've more 
right there than I," he muttered. And the thought that his 
scepter had departed, and his mark was wearing out, came 
home to him for the first time, and bitterly enough. He was 
lying on the very spot where the fights came off"; where he him- 



TOM BMOWIf'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBT 309 

self had fought six years ago his first and last battle. He con- 
jured up the scene till he could almost hear the shouts of the 
ring, and East's whisper in his ear ; and looking across the close 
to the Doctor's private door, half expected it to open, and the 
tall figure in cap and gown come striding under the elm trees 
towards him. 

No, no ! that sight could never be seen again. There was no 
flag flying on the round tower ; the schoolhouse windows were 
all shuttered up ; and when the flag went u]d again, and the 
shutters came down, it would be to welcome a stranger. All 
that was left on earth of him whom he had honored was lying 
cold and still under the chapel floor. He would go in and see 
the place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men 
and new methods might do for other people ; let those who 
would worship the rising star ; he, at least, would be faithful to 
the sun which had set. And so he got up, and walked to the 
chapel door and unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner 
in all the broad land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow. 

He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a 
moment to glance over the empty benches. His heart was still 
proud and high, and he walked up to the seat which he had 
last occupied as a sixth-form boy, and sat himself down there 
to collect his thoughts. 

And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order 
not a little. The memories of eight years were all dancing 
through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would, 
while beneath them all his heart was throbbing with the dull 
sense of a loss that could never be made up to him. The rays 
of the evening sun came solemnly through the painted windows 
above his head, and fell in gorgeous colors on the opposite wall, 
and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit little by little. And 
he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning for- 
ward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud. " If he could 
only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes ; have 
told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how 
he loved and reverenced him, and would, by God's help, follow 



310 THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 

his steps in life and death, he could have borne it all without a 
murmur. But that he should have gone away forever without 
knowing it all, was too much to bear." — " But am I sure he 
does not know it all ? " The thought made him start. " May 
he not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am 
I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow — as I should wish to 
have sorrowed when I shall meet him again ? " 

He raised himself up and looked round, and after a minute 
rose and walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat 
down on the very seat which he had occupied on his first Sun- 
day at Rugby. And then the old memories rushed back again, 
but softened and subdued, and soothing him as he let himself 
be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great 
painted window above the altar, and remembered how, when a 
little boy, he used to try not to look through it at the elm trees 
and the rooks, before the painted glass came, and the subscrip- 
tion for the painted glass, and the letter he wrote home for 
money to give to it. And there, down below, was the very 
name of the boy who sat on his right hand on that first day, 
scratched rudely on the oak paneling. 

And then came the thought of all his old schoolfellows, and 
form after form of boys, nobler and braver and purer than he, 
rose up and seemed to rebuke him. Could he not think of them, 
and what they had felt and were feeling, they who had honored 
and loved from the first the man whom he had taken years to 
know and love ? Could he not think of those yet dearer to him 
who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and 
were now without a husband or a father? Then the grief 
which he began to share with others became gentle and holy, 
and he rose up once more, and walked up the steps to the altar; 
and while the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, knelt down 
humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share of the bur- 
den which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his 
own strength. 

Here let us leave him — where better could we leave him, 
than at the altar, before which he had first caught a glimpse 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS AT RUGBY 311 

of the glory of his birthright, and felt the drawing of the bond 
which links all living souls together in one brotherhood — at 
the grave beneath the altar of him who had opened his ej^es to 
see that glory, and softened his heart till it could feel that bond? 
And let us not be hard on him if at that moment his soul is 
fuller of the tomb, and him who lies there, than of the altar 
and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages have to be gone 
through, I believe, by all young and brave souls, who must 
win their way through hero-worship to the worship) of Him 
who is the King and Lord of heroes. For it is only through 
our mysterious human relationships, through the love and ten- 
derness and purit}^ of mothers, and sisters, and wives, through 
the strength, and courage, and wisdom of fathers, and brothers, 
and teachers, that we can come to the knowledge of Him in 
whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and 
the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell 
forever and ever in perfect fullness. 



DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

17 9 5-1868 

Daniel Pierce Thompson was born at the foot of Bunker Hill, in 
Boston, Mass., in 1795. He was graduated from Middlebury College at 
the age of twenty-five, and entered upon the practice of law at Mont- 
pelier, Vt., where he speedily rose to eminence. He served his State 
as clerk of the legislature, judge of probate, county clerk, and secre- 
tary of state. He compiled the laws of Vermont, contributed to the 
leading periodicals of his time, and wrote a number of books, which 
proved successful ventures. Among these were " May Martin," " The 
Green Mountain Boys," and " Locke Amsden ; or, the Schoolmaster." 
Of the latter work nine editions have been published. Judge Thomp- 
son died in 1868. 

Characterization 

" Locke Amsden," though not sufficiently ambitious to receive much 
attention from critical reviews, was very favorably noticed in former 
years, by the educational and secular press, and was more fortunate 
than many contemporary stories somewhat similar in plan, since it 
secured a sufficient hold upon popular interest to insure its perpetuation 
to the present day. This it owes largely, no doubt, to the subject-mat- 
ter of the book, and to the high esteem in which its author was held as 
an eminent citizen of spotless fame. Moreover, the style of the com- 
position, while not exhibiting a high order of genius, is yet pleasing 
and creditable, and the book is one that is read with real profit, espe- 
cially by those who are actively connected with educational interests. 

The School in the Horn of the Moon 

(From "Locke Amsden ; or, the Schoolmaster") 

It was near the middle of the dark and dreary season which 
characterizes our northern clime. Old Winter had taken his 
January nap. And having protracted longer than usual his 
cold, sweaty slumbers, he had now, as if to make amends for 

312 



TEE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 313 

his remissness, aroused himself with a rage and fury which 
seemed to show his determination to expel the last vestige of 
his antagonistic element, heat, that had thus invaded and for a 
while disarmed him, forever from his dominions. The whole 
season, indeed, to drop the metaphorical for plain language, 
had been one of uncommon mildness. A warm and broken 
December had been succeeded by a still warmer and more 
thawy January. And so little had people been made aware of 
the presence of winter thus far, that their doors were often left 
open, and small fires only were either used or required. But 
the cold weather now set in with intense severity, and com- 
pelled all to keep tightly closed doors and roaring fires. 

The schoolhouse, which we have been for some time making 
the scene of action, had been built the preceding fall ; and the 
interior, consequently, had been freshly plastered; while the 
woodwork of the doors and windows, already tight before from 
its newness, had been swollen by the recent thawy weather : so 
that the whole room, by this, and the finishing operation of the 
frost in closing up the remaining interstices, had been made 
almost wholly impervious to the admission of any fresh air 
from without. 

From this, however, no evil consequences, owing to the 
mildness of the season, and the attendant circumstances we 
have mentioned, had resulted to the school. But scarcely 
a week had elapsed, after the change of weather just de- 
scribed, before the scholars, though apparently much enjoy- 
ing the contrasted comforts of their tight, stove-heated room, 
while the cold, savage blasts could be heard raging and howl- 
ing without, became very visibly affected. A livid paleness 
overspread their features; while their every appearance and 
movement indicated great and increasing languor and feeble- 
ness. The general health of the school, in short, including that 
of the master, seemed to be rapidly failing. These indications 
were soon followed by several instances of so great illness as to 
confine its victims to their homes, and even to their beds. 
Among the latter was the case of the only son and child of a 



814 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

poor but pious and intelligent widow, by the name of Marvin, 
which excited in the bosom of Locke feelings of the deepest sor- 
row for the misfortune of the boy, and sympathy in the afflic- 
tion of his doting parent. And it was not without reason that 
both teacher and parent were touched with peculiar grief on 
the occasion ; for the boy, who was about ten years old, was not 
only kind and amiable in disposition, but a very excellent 
scholar. And now, almost for the first time, having the advan- 
tages of good instruction, and his ambition and natural love of 
learning having been kindled into enthusiasm by the various 
incitements held out to him by his instructor, with whom he 
had become a secret favorite, he pursued his studies with an 
ardor and assiduity which knew no relaxation. And having 
made surprising progress in grammar, during the few weeks 
the school had kept^ he had recently solicited and obtained 
leave to commence arithmetic, to which he was giving his 
whole heart and soul, when he was thus snatched from his 
engrossing pursuit by the hand of sickness. 

These cases of sickness, and especially the more serious one 
of the good and studious little Henry, the boy we have particu- 
larized, produced much sensation in the neighborhood. And 
the cause, not only of these instances of absolute illness, but of 
the altered and sickly appearance of the whole school, which 
now excited observation and uneasiness, began to be generally 
discussed. As no epidemic was prevailing in the country, and 
as all other schools in the vicinity, as far as could be heard 
from, were even unusually healthy, it was soon concluded that 
the present unhealthiness must be occasioned by something 
wrong about the schoolhouse, or in the manner of conducting 
the school. And as nothing amiss could possibly be perceived 
in the schoolhouse, which all pronounced warm and comfort- 
able, it was settled that the fault, of course, must be looked for 
in the master. Some averred that the latter, by undue severity, 
or by some other means, had broken down the spirit of his 
scholars, which had caused them to become melancholy, droop- 
ing, and sickly. Others said that he had made the scholars 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 315 

study so hard, that it had caused their health to give way 
under tlie tasks which they were induced, through fear, or 
some mysterious influence he had obtained over tlieir minds, to 
perform. And there were yet others who carried still farther 
the idea thrown out by those last named, and contended that 
the master must have resorted to some unlawful art or power, 
which he had exercised upon his pupils, not only to subjugate 
them, but somehow to give them an unnatural thirst for their 
studies, and as unnatural a power of mastering them. In proof 
of this, one man cited the instance of his son, who, having 
become half-crazed on his arithmetic, and having worked all 
one evening on a sum which he could not do, went to bed, 
leaving his slate upon the table, but rose some time in the 
night in his sle^, actually worked out the answer, returned to 
bed, wholly unconscious of what he had done, and slept till 
morning, when he found, to his surprise, the whole process in 
I his own figures, upon the slate.^ 

This incident, however little it might have had to do, in 
the minds of others, in proving the position it was cited to 
sustain, seemed to go far with these people in confirming 
the strange notion they were beginning to conceive, that the 
master had brought some unnatural influence to bear upon 
his pupils. And when they compared the wild, thoughtless, 
and unstudious conduct which had ever characterized the 
scholars before, with their present greatly altered behavior, 
and the eager diligence with which many of them, both day 
and night, pursued their studies, particularly mathematical 
studies, the}^ mysteriously shook their heads, and said, " they 
didn't know about these things; such a change might have 
come in a natural way, but they couldn't understand it." 
It was agreed on all hands, they further argued, that the 
master was deep in figures. Captain Bunker, who was con- 
sidered the best natural reckoner in those parts, had confessed 

' This incident, improbable as it may appear to some, is a true one, having 
occurred within the knowledge of the author, who otherwise would not have 
ventured in relating it. — D. P. Thompson. 



316 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

that he couldn't hold a candle to him in that respect. They 
had always heard that strange things could be done with 
figures, if a person sought to do so. Indeed, there was a cer- 
tain point in figures, they supposed, beyond which, if a person 
persisted in going, he was sure to have help from one who 
should be nameless, but who always exacted his pay for his 
assistance. They hoped this was not the case with their mas- 
ter ; but if it was, and he was trying to lead his scholars into 
the same forbidden paths, it was no wonder that they had such 
strange, blue looks ; nor was it at all surprising that sickness 
should come upon them, as a judgment. And they again 
shook their heads and said " it was high time that something 
should be done." 

Let it not be inferred, that we would convey the idea, that 
the people of the country in which our scene is laid were gen- 
erally as superstitious as some of the circumstances here rep- 
resented to have taken place might seem to imply. They 
certainly were not so. And comparatively few locations, we 
presume, could have been found, where such arguments as 
we have put into the mouths of some of the good people of 
this uncultured district would have been listened to a mo- 
ment. But our observations, made during considerable travel 
and intercourse among the common classes of people in the 
Middle and Northern States, have apprised us that instances of 
the prevalence of notions similar to those just mentioned are 
still to be found, and much oftener, too, than we had formerly 
supposed. We have often come across isolated neighborhoods, 
even in the heart of intelligent communities, where, to our sur- 
prise, we found all the exploded notions of witchcraft, sorcery, 
divination, and the like, still entertained; and to an extent, 
indeed, that led us almost to doubt whether we had not, by 
some miracle or other, been carried back a century and a half, 
and set down among a clan of the immediate disciples of old 
Cotton Mather, who spent so much time and learning in 
making mystery and mischief about things which have no 
existence, except in imagination. Such a neighborhood, with 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 817 

a few honorable exceptions, we are constrained to say, was that 
of the Horn of the Moon. 

On the day following that during which the singular sur- 
mises and discussions, to which we have alluded, were started, 
two more members of the school were taken down ; and the 
situation of Henry Marvin had become so alarming, that his 
agonized mother, some time in the preceding night, had dis- 
patched a man for a physician of high reputation, residing in a 
large village, known by the name of Cartersville, nearly thirty 
miles distant; though she was compelled to pledge her only 
cow to defray the expenses of the man, and induce him to 
become answerable to the doctor for his pay. All this, as may 
be supposed, much increased the alarm in the district, and 
quickened into action those who had busied themselves in get- 
ting up an excitement against the master. Meanwhile, the 
innocent victim of these absurd imputations remained at his 
post, wholly ignorant of the stir that was going on about him, 
and thinking only of the misfortune which threatened his 
school. On the evening of the day last mentioned he dis- 
missed his school earl}^, and with a heavy heart repaired to the 
residence of the distressed widow, to visit his sick little favorite. 
On reaching the house, he entered the room ordinarily occupied 
by the family ; when he was introduced, by a woman in attend- 
ance, to Dr. Lincoln, the physician before named, who, having 
arrived a short time before, was now taking some refreshment. 

" Our little patient here is a pupil of yours, sir ? " inquiringly 
said the doctor, who was a small, unostentatious, but a highly 
intellectual man. 

" He is," replied Locke ; " and I can hardly express how 
much anxiety I feel for his situation, which I fear you will pro- 
nounce dangerous." 

" Your apprehensions, I regret to say, are but too well 
grounded, sir." 

" What do you consider the true character of his disease?" 

" Whatever it may have been at first, it is now a brain fever, 
threatening congestion." 



318 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

" Are you prepared to assign any particular cause ? " 

" Of his first attack, I am not. In regard to the form the 
disease has now assumed, I may be better prepared, perhaps, to 
give an opinion after asking you a few questions. What are 
the boy's habits of study and scliolarship ? " 

" He is a bright scholar — uncommonly so — very industrious 
and anxious to learn." 

" I suspected so. And you have held up to him what to 
others, perhaps, would scarcely be an inducement sufficient to 
move them, but what, to his sensitive mind, has incited him to 
unwonted exertions?" 

" As you say, sir, I may have said that which had the effect 
to incite him ; although I am sure I have used more exertions 
with many others." 

" I presume so. It does not require a timber chain to draw a 
miser to a supposed bed of gold. A bare glimpse of the loved 
treasure is enough to kindle his whole soul for the eager grasp. 
So with the youthful intellect, if bright, and united with a 
strong love of learning. And let me caution you, my dear sir, 
how you spur on such a mind, in one of tender years. The 
body must be permitted to grow, as well as the mind. Very 
bright children are said always to die first, and though the 
cause generally assigned for this may be false, there is yet 
much truth in the saying; the true cause of the fact being, 
that the minds of such children, by the injudiciously applied 
incitements of j)arents and teachers, are often so over-wrought, 
that disease, at every slight attack on other parts of the system, 
is prone to fly to the enfeebled brain, and, oftener than other- 
wise, destroy its victim. In these remarks you will read the 
opinion to which I incline respecting the present case." 

"Ay; but are you aware that several others of my school have 
been taken ill, and those, too, that would be the last to whom you 
would think of imputing injury from undue mental exertion ? " 

" I have so understood, sir. There may have been some local 
cause for these, as well as the first attack of the poor little fellow 
here. Has any such cause suggested itself to your mind ? " 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 819 

" No ! unless it be the late sudden and great change in the 
weather." 

" That will hardly account for the manner in which your 
school, almost the whole of it, in some degree, as I understand, 
has been affected, in a time of such general health. There 
must be other causes, which I feel some curiosity to ascertain 
before I return." 

The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of a 
woman of the neighborhood, one of that valuable class of soci- 
ety who retail news, with comments. 

" Do you attend the school-meeting to night, Mr. Amsden ? " 
she soon asked ; for she did not appear very bashful in claim- 
ing her right to a share in the conversation. 

" School meeting, madam ! " said Locke, in surprise ; " I was 
not aware that there was to be one." 

" Oh, yes, there is ; why, everybody is going, they say. I sup- 
posed you, oj course, knew it." 

" This is the first I have heard of it. But what is the object 
of the meeting ? " 

" Oh, to see what's to be done about the scholars being in this 
sickly and malagantly way to be sure. Some say the school 
won't keep any more at any rate. But I tell 'em, like enough 
the master will clear it up, after all's said and done." 

" Clear up what, pray, madam ? Of what can I possibly be 
accused, in connection with this misfortune to my school ? " 

" Oh, don't ask me now — I let it pass into one ear and out the 
other, what I hear ; because I never mean to be one of those 
who go about telling things to breed mischief and ill-will 
among people." And here the good and scrupulous lady 
struck off in a tangent, and asked the doctor, now while she 
thought of it, as she said, seeing she had heard a great many 
disputes about it, " whether saffron or camomile tea was, upon 
the whole, the best for the measles ? " 

As soon as the doctor, who was a man of much sly but 
caustic humor, had gravely delivered himself of a very learned 
answer, which, he said, upon the whole, all things carefully con- 



320 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

sidered, he must conclude in the language of the great Dr. 
Pope, — 

*' For forms of diet drinks let fools contest ; 
That which is best administered is best " — 

as soon as he had done this, Locke, whose mind was still run- 
ning upon the inexplicable news he had just heard from the 
woman, again turned to her, and asked if she knew whether 
Mr. Bunker had returned from the journey on which he had 
been for the last fortnight absent. 

" Why, we don't certainly know yet," replied the newsmon- 
gress ; " but we kinder 'spect he got home this very afternoon. 
Jim Walker, who was to our house about a nour ago, to bor- 
row a sassage-fiUer for his wife, said he thought he saw, from 
his house, a creter over there, that looked like the captain's old 
black hoss, going to water, and rolling in the snow, as if he'd 
jest been onharnessed after a journey." 

" Well, I am thankful for that, if he has indeed arrived," 
replied T^ocke, who felt anxious for the presence of his friend 
at the approaching meeting. 

" Come, Mr. Amsden," said the doctor, rising, " you will of 
course attend the school-meeting ; and I will go with you, if I 
can be spared ; but we will now walk into the sick-room, if you 
please. We cannot admit much company," he continued, as 
he saw the gossip turn a longing eye upon the opening door, 
as if waiting for an invitation to accompany them ; " but Mr. 
Amsden is the boy's teacher, whose presence may be a benefit, 
by recalling his wandering mind." 

When they entered the sick-chamber, a scene of silent but 
touching woe presented itself. The grief-stricken mother, who 
scarcely heeded their approach, sat bending over the pillowed 
couch, intently gazing, with fixed, glazed, and watery eyes, 
upon the face of the little sufferer, as he lay nervously moving 
his restless limbs, and rolling his swathed head, in the deep 
and troubled slumbers which exhausted nature seemed to 
be strongly claiming on the one hand, and grappling disease 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 321 

fiercely disputing and constantly disturbing on the other. The 
doctor took the patient's hand, and attentively examined his 
pulse ; when some movement, in restoring the limb to its place, 
awoke him. As his dim and slowly wandering eyes fell upon 
the face of his beloved teacher, a single glance of intelligence 
slightly illumined them ; and the semblance of an affectionate 
smile played faintly, an instant, over his sunken and livid 
features, vanishing away like some struggling sunbeam that 
has partially burst through a storm}'- cloud. 

The mother saw the glance, with the recognition it evinced. 
And the association, as her thoughts flew back to the happy days 
of her darling boy's health and friendly intercourse with his 
teacher, of which that look had so plainly spoken, and reverted 
to what he now was, and probably soonVould be, — the associa- 
tion thus called up was too much for her bursting heart. She 
groaned aloud from the inmost recesses of her troubled spirit. 
Her whole frame became deeply agitated, and her bosom shook 
with the convulsive throes of her agony, as with indistinct, 
quick, whispered ejaculations, she seemed eagerly snatching for 
the hand of mercy from above to save her from sinking under 
the insupportable weight of her own feelings. Her prayers 
were so far answered as to bring her the temporary relief of 
tears, which now gushed and fell like rain from their opening 
fountains of bitterness. 

" I am glad to see that," observed Lincoln, brushing awa}^ a 
tear that had started out upon his knitting brows. " It will 
relieve you, madam. And now let me persuade you to go out, 
bathe your face, and otherwise refresh yourself. We will remain, 
and take care of your son." 

" Our profession," resumed the doctor, after the widow had 
retired, as she did, in silence, on the suggestion just made to 
her, " our profession, Mr. Amsden, is one which brings along 
with it many pains, but which, at the same time, is not without 
its gratifications. A case now, like this, an almost hopelessly 
sick child, with a distracted parent hanging over it — and we 
are daily pained with witnessing such scenes — draws hard, 

S. M.— 31 



322 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

hard, I confess, upon my sympathies. But again, on the other 
hand, if this boy should recover through my means, I shall lay 
up in the bosom of that mother, whether I deserve it or not, a 
store of gratitude which will, perhaps, often find utterance in 
blessings at the bare mention of my name ! Yes, if he recover," 
continued the speaker, musingly, as he rose at some new ap- 
pearance he noticed in the patient, and went to the bedside, " if 
he recover — and all that I can do shall be done, and that too 
with no charge to the poor woman, even if I knew I had got to 
beg my next meal. But it is a fierce and unmanageable dis- 
ease, and I tremble for the crisis of this night. Here, step here, 
Mr. Amsden, and listen to the confused mutterings of broken 
thoughts and images that are whirling in the chaos of that per- 
plexed and laboring brain." 

Locke immediately complied with the request ; and as he 
turned his ear towards the rapidly-moving lips of the delirious 
boy, he could soon distinguish " six times six are thirty-six — 
seven times six are forty-two — eight times six are forty-eight,'^ and 
so on. Sometimes he would follow one figure in this manner 
through all its successive multipliers, in the usual table, and 
then take up another, follow it awhile, and suddenly drop it for 
a third, which in turn, perhaps, would be relinquished for some 
attempted process in subtraction or division ; in all of which 
he seemed to be constantly meeting with troubles and perplex- 
ities, with which he would appear to contend awhile, and then 
return to his old starting point in the multiplication table, and 
with freshened impulse hurry on with " six times six are thirty- 
six — seven times six are forty-two," etc., etc., till something again 
occurred to turn his bewildered mind from the course it was 
mechanically pursuing. 

" Poor, poor boy ! " exclaimed Locke, as, with a sigh and 
starting tear, he turned away from the affecting spectacle. 

The time having arrived for our hero's departure for the 
school-meeting, and the widow now coming in, the doctor ap- 
prised her of his intention of accompanying the former, and, 
giving his directions for the next hour, requested her to send 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 323 

for him should any considerable change occur in the patient, 
when they both set off together for the schoolhouse. 

On reaching the place of destination, they found, with the 
exception of Bunker and one or two others, all the men, to- 
gether with several of the older scholars of the district, already 
assembled, and on the point of proceeding to business. As 
soon as Locke had helped his friend, the doctor, to a seat, and 
taken one near by for himself, he cast a leisurely look round 
the assembly. It required neither much time nor closeness of 
observation to apprise him that there was a great deal of sup- 
pressed, excited feeling prevailing generally among the com- 
pany. Nor was he much longer in satisfying himself, from the 
words which occasionally reached his ears, from little knots of 
eager whispers around him, and from the many cold and sus- 
picious glances he encountered, that a great portion of this feel- 
ing was unfavorably directed against himself, the cause of which 
he was still unable to conjecture. 

" I motion Deacon Gilchrist be Moderator of this meeting," 
said one, bobbing half-way up, and hastily squatting back to 
his seat, before the sentence was fairly out of his mouth. 

" I am not so sure but they will need a moderator before they 
get through," whispered the doctor to Locke, emphasizing the 
word so as to give it a literal signification. 

The vote having been taken, and the chairman, a short, slug- 
gish man, whose wisdom and sanctity lay principally in his 
face, being duly installed in his seat, he pronounced the meet- 
ing open, and invited those present " to offer." 

" I motion," again said the person who had first spoken, " I 
motion, Mr. Moderator, that this school come to an eend. And 
I've got my reasons for't." 

The motion was eagerly seconded by two or three others, all 
speaking at once, and demanding the question, in a manner 
that plainly showed that a considerable portion of those present 
were acting in concert, and with the intention of having the 
vote taken before any debate could be had on the subject. And 
the chairman, who was evidently a secret favorer of the project. 



324 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

jumped up to put the question; when Locke, who had wit- 
nessed the movement with the utmost surprise, rose and de- 
manded the reasons which the mover asserted he had for his 
proposed measure. 

" I call for the vote — put it to vote ! " was the only reply which 
Locke received to his reasonable demand. 

" Look here now, Mr. Moderator," cried a tall, rough-looking 
young fellow, who rose in a different part of the room from that 
occupied by the combined party, " I have neither chick or child 
to send to school, to be sure ; but I'm a voter here, and I must 
say I think you are for pushing the master rather hard, to vote 
him out without giving him your reasons, so as to allow him 
a chance to clear it up, if he can. And as to any blame for 
the sickness resting on him, I ain't so sure but what he can ; 
for I can't say I think much of this black art business, or of its 
having anything to do in bringing on the trouble. I wouldn't 
give much for all the help the master or anybody else ever got 
that way. Now you may think as you're a mind to ; but I 
never thought the old boy was half so much of a critter as he's 
cracked up to be. And I don't believe he's any great scratch 
at cipherin himself neither, much less to teach it to others." 

The sensibilities of the good deacon received a very visible 
shock from this strange and irreverent speech, as it was deemed ; 
and his zealous supporter, whom we have mentioned as taking 
the lead in motions thus far made, was so much outraged in 
his feelings, either by the sentiments of the speaker, or the 
opposition they implied to his plans, that he rose, and said he 
thought the young man ought to be rebuked for such loose 
discourse, in a meeting like this, where folks had so much rea- 
son to be solemn. " I wonder if he believes," continued the 
zealot, warming up, " what the scripture says about the j)ower 
of sorcerers' getting unlawful help to do what other folks 
couldn't do? And I should like to ask him where he thinks 
the help come from, when young John Mugridge, that the mas- 
ter had got along so unnatural fast in figures, did a hard sum 
in his sleep. I want to know, too, what he thinks about widow 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 325 

Marvin's boy being taken sick — in mercy, perhaps — the very 
next week after the master put him to ciphering. And then I 
wish he'd tell us what makes the whole school look so blue and 
ghastly, if there ain't anything wrong in the master's doings. 
And I call on the master himself to say whether he can deny 
that he understands the black art." 

Locke could hardly bring himself to reply to this ridiculous 
charge, or even to answer the particular question that he had 
been thus publicly called on to answer. He did so, however, 
by briefly stating that he knew of no such art. He had heard, 
indeed, that the faculty of foretelling events, fortunes, and the 
like, was supposed to be attainable by figures. And he recol- 
lected, as he commenced arithmetic when a mere boy, indulg- 
ing a sort of vague expectation that he should come across this 
art, if he went far enough. But the further he advanced, the 
more did he see the impossibility of acquiring any such faculty 
by the use of figures, which, more peculiarly than any other 
science, discarded all suppositions, and had to do only with 
certain demonstrable facts. And now, having studied or ex- 
amined, as he believed, nearly all of that science that had been 
published, he was fully prepared to say that the belief in the 
faculty in question was wholly a delusion. 

" I don't blame him for denying it," said the superstitious 
spokesman before named. " I think I should, if I was wicked 
enough to tamper with sich forbidden things. But I should 
like to hear Deacon Gilchrist the Moderator's views on this 
subject." 

The Moderator, after sundry hems and haws, by way of get- 
ting his apparatus of speech in motion, assumed a look of wise 
solemnity, and observed : 

" It appears to me, my beloved friends, that there's an awful 
responsibility on us. Duty is duty. I do think so. I don't 
know, nor want to, much about the hidden things of figures, 
except they are thought to be the instruments that Satan works 
by sometimes. We know there were sorcerers and workers in 
hidden mysteries, in the days of the apostles ; and the scripter 



326 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

says they shall be multiplied in the latter days, which now is. 
I once read a book by a great and deep divine — I've eeny most 
forgot his name, but I think it was Woollen Marther, or some 
sich oncommon crissen name — who had seen, with his own 
eyes, a great deal of the awful doings of Satan. And he speaks 
of the strange looks of those that were buffeted by the adver- 
sary, and the divers maladies and sore evils that befell those who 
were led by his emissaries into unlawful ways. And I do think, 
my friends, there's something very mysterious in this 'ere 
school. I do think we have seen a token of displeasure, that 
seems to say to us, in a loud voice — yea, the voice of many 
thunders — Come out, and he separate from him^ that bring etli the evil 
upon your 

This speech was triumphantly echoed by several of the dea- 
con's supporters, as an unanswerable argument for the measure 
they were so intent on carrying. There were others, however, 
who were so obtuse as not to perceive the force of the argument, 
or the justice of its application. Among these were the in- 
tended victim of this combination, and his newly-found friend, 
the tall fellow, whose speech had so scandalized his opponents; 
both of whom made a reply to the oracular speech of our mod- 
ern Solomon — the one by denying both premises and conclu- 
sions, and the other by drolly asking pardon of the old boy, 
the deacon, or any of their friends, if he had underrated or 
offended them in his former speech, and by contending that the 
master had cleared himself, to his mind, of the charge of cipher- 
ing his scholars into fevers, and their jDarents into fidgets. 
These replies led to a good deal of scattering debate, in which 
nearly all, by speech, word thrown in, or other manifestation, 
participated ; and by which it became apparent that there were 
strictly three parties in the assembly : first, the deacon's trained 
followers, who, numbering about one third of the district, were 
for breaking up the school, for reasons before given; second, 
another portion, of about the same number, who had been 
induced to come into the plan of the former, through their 
secret fears that some contagious disease was about to break out 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 327 

in the school, which their children would be more likely to 
take if the school continued; and last, the other third, who 
believed the master in no way chargeable for the condition of 
the school, which they wished might be still continued. 

The deacon's party, perceiving, by this time, that they could 
safely count on strength enough to carry their measure, clam- 
ored more loudly than ever for a decision of the question. 
Locke gave himself up as lost, and a few minutes more would, 
indeed, have been decisive of his doom, but for the unexpected 
arrival of a new personage. This was Bunker, who having 
reached home only a few hours before, had not heard what was 
in train till the evening was considerably advanced ; when, 
accidentally learning something of the facts, he came post haste 
to the scene of action. This arrival very visibly disconcerted 
the deacon's party, and produced a dead pause in their pro- 
ceedings, during which the former marched boldly up to Locke, 
and gave him one of those hearty and cordial shakes of the 
hand, which send assurance to the desponding heart, and are 
more gratefully felt, on some emergencies, than a thousand 
expressed pledges of friendship, on others. After being intro- 
duced to Dr. Lincoln, Bunker, taking a conspicuous stand before 
the company, immediately demanded the object of the meeting, 
and, by a series of sharp and rapid questions, addressed first to 
one, then another, soon succeeded in drawing out the whole 
truth, with all that had transpired. 

" ye miserable thinkers ! " he exclaimed, as soon as he had 
satisfied himself of the true situation of affairs, "what, in the 
name of common sense, could have put ye up to such non- 
sense and folly as this ? Three decent efforts for a correct idea 
should have told you that the master would not be caught 
teaching, for nothing, so valuable a secret as the black art, if 
that art is all you suppose it to be. Why, by foretelling the rise 
in the markets, or the lucky number of the ticket that is to draw 
the highest prize in the next lottery, he can make an indepen- 
dent fortune in six months, if he will keep his secret to him- 
self; but if he goes and imparts this faculty to others, they will 



328 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

get away all his chances for such luck, and his art won't be 
worth a farthing to him. Do you believe he would do such a 
foolish thing? No ! not a soul of you. There is thought num- 
ber one for you. 

" Again — what could make you think that the teaching of 
this art ever did, or could, bring ill-health, either upon the 
teacher or the taught? This was never a fact. Is there any- 
thing said in the Bible about the magicians, witches, or diviners, 
or their followers, being taken sickly for their practices ? Did 
Simon Magus make anybody sick ? Did the sorceress, or black- 
art girl, that St. Paul converted, carry disease in her train ? No ; 
for she had brought her master a good deal of money by tell- 
ing folk's fortunes; when, if she had brought sickness and judg- 
ments upon them, they would have given him more money to 
have kept her away, 

" Nor was there any such misfortunes connected with the 
witchcraft in the old Bay State. Doctor Mather, even in his 
book, don't say so; for I have heard it read. The bewitched, 
according to his story, only acted and appeared a little wild 
and devilish. But, if his book had said this, it would amount 
to nothing ; for I don't believe, if the old Nick himself should 
turn book-maker to-day, and sit down, with his old yellow, 
brimstone-tempered steel pen, and do his best, for a month, 
he could get more of the real essence of falsehood between the 
two lids of a book, than can be found in the book I've men- 
tioned. And if ever that learned doctor — for he was accounted 
pious — gets within the walls of the New Jerusalem, he will 
find, I fear, when he comes to see what suffering, death, and 
crime were brought about through his influence and example, 
as well as he might mean, that heaven will be rather an un- 
easy place for him. But, supposing the judgments of sickness, 
and so on, did attend such doings, what then ? How would it 
stand in the present case ? Why, the master, by the very art 
that was to produce the misfortune, would know that the mis- 
fortune would follow his attempt to teach it. And do you think 
he would try it, when he knew it would bring sickness and 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 329 

trouble on his school, that must break it up, cost him the loss 
of all his wages, and, what is more, send him off with a char- 
acter that would forever prevent his getting another school? 
Would he be such a stupid fool as to do this ? Never ! and 
you all now see and know it. There is thought number two 
for you. 

" Once more. In what I have said, L have taken you wholly 
on your own ground ; so that you should not say I could meet 
you only on my own dunghill. I will now make you come on 
to my ground, and see if you can stand fire any better there. 
And this is my ground: — I say that this black art, as you 
understand it, the faculty of foretelling events, together with 
sorcery, magic, or witchery, and every other art that lays claim 
to any such faculty by the aid of figures, or anything else, is 
all moonshine, imposition, and falsehood. And I don't want 
to set before you but one single idea to make you know and feel 
the truth of my assertion. Now follow me. Did you ever 
know or hear of a rich fortune-teller, black-art-worker, or con- 
jurer ? Speak out, if you ever did. A single one that was rich, 
I say. You don't speak ? No ; for you can't say you ever did 
hear of such an one. You all well know that they are a set 
of poor, beggarly rascals from beginning to end. Well now, 
what prevents them, as I said of our master here, if they have 
this faculty of looking or figuring into futurity, from seeing and 
seizing upon every lottery ticket that is to draw a good prize ; 
from buying every article in the markets that is about to rise 
greatly in price ? What prevents them from doing this, and 
making their fortunes at a blow ? Tell me, you, or you, or you. 
This is thought number three for you. 

" Now my number first pinned an argument upon yon — 
even allowing 3'ou your own false premises — with nothing 
but a wooden pin that you could not break. My number 
second, still giving you the same advantage, put in a board 
nail, that, with or ^dthout the pin, not one of you could twist 
or move. And my number third puts a double ten clincher 
upon the whole, that all of you together can never start. Now 



330 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

stand forth and gainsay it, ye persecutors of the best teacher 
we 6ver had in the district, or forever hold your peace ! No 
one speaks ; and I pronounce the master guiltless, and acquitted 
of your foolish charge. 

" But although the master is no way blamable, yet that 
an unusual number of the scholars are sick, and nearly all 
drooping, if I am rightly informed, I am not going to deny. 
And there is some cause for it, which we must try to discover, 
that we may stoj) the evil. If it is not the starting point of 
some epidemic disease that is about to spread over the country, 
why, then it must be owing to something wrong about the 
schoolhouse. By taking up the possibilities, one after another, 
I probably could think it out myself within twenty -four hours. 
But here is a man," continued the speaker, turning towards the 
doctor, " who has been in the way of thinking of such things 
half of his life. Let us have his opinion. Dr. Lincoln, will 
you favor us with your views on the subject of inquiry ? " 

The doctor, who had attentively listened to the whole debate, 
much of which he had appeared to enjoy with the highest zest, 
now rose, and observed that he had already made up his mind 
to offer his opinion on the matter in question, before called 
on ; and he would now proceed to do so. He had some secret 
suspicion of the cause of the general unhealthiness of the school, 
on first learning the fact ; and having come to the meeting, 
mainly with the view of satisfying himself in relation to the 
matter, his attention, during the time he had been here, had 
been particularly directed to the subject ; and he was now pre- 
pared to say, that what was before a mere suspicion with him 
was now a confirmed opinion. The cause, and sole cause, of 
this unhealthiness was the want of ventilation ; and, from what 
he had suffered himself since in the room, although the door 
had been frequently opened, he was only surprised that the 
condition of the scholars was not infinitely worse than he under- 
stood it was. Though not wishing it to strengthen his own 
convictions, yet, as it might better convince others, he would 
proceed to set the matter in a stronger light before them. 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 331 

The doctor, then, while every ear and eye were regarding his 
words and movements with intense interest, called on Locke to 
ascertain the number of cubic feet contained in the empty space 
of the room. A carpenter present, who happened to have a 
bundle of his tools with him, having called into the meeting 
while on his way home from some finished job, produced a rule, 
and took the different dimensions of the apartment with great 
exactness ; when Locke, from the data thus furnished, quickly 
ascertained and told off the number of cubic feet, as required. 
This number, owing to the ill-advised construction of the school- 
room, in which the floor rose from one side at so great an angle 
as to take up about one sixth part of what would have been the 
space with a level floor, amounted only, with proper deductions 
for stove, seats, etc., to sixteen hundred cubic feet. 

" Now let me observe," said the doctor, " that, from the latest 
and most accurate experiments of chemists and medical men, 
it has been ascertained that one person, by respiration from 
the lungs alone, destroys all the oxygen, or vital principle, in 
thirteen cubic feet of space per hour. How many scholars have 
you, Mr. Amsden ? " 

" Sixty, upon the average, perhaps more, say sixty-four." 

" Ascertain, then, how many cubic feet of vital air these all 
will destroy in one hour." 

Both Locke and Bunker, the latter of whom now began to 
be in his element, almost the next instant gave the same answer 
— eight hundred and thirty -two feet. 

" How long do you generally keep them in without inter- 
mission, in which the doors would necessarily remain open a 
moment while they were passing out ? " 

" Generally an hour and a half, sometimes two." 

" Then, gentlemen," said the doctor, " the true, but greatly 
misconceived, cause of your trouble and just alarm is now 
plainly before you. You see, by our calculation, that, in less 
than two hours, all the air that can sustain life a moment would 
be, in this new and almost bottle-tight room, if not renovated by 
opening the doors or windows, entirely consumed. And, taking 



332 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

into the account the quantity of this vital principle inhaled 
by the pores of so many persons, and the probably greater por- 
tion destroyed by the fire and reflecting surface of the stove and 
pipe, I presume one hour is sufficient to render the air extremely 
unhealthy ; an hour and a half, absolutely poisonous ; and two 
hours, so fatally so as to cause your children to drop dead on 
the floor." 

" Thunder ! " exclaimed Bunker, " can this be so ? I long 
since knew that we were put upon our allowance, when in close 
rooms, for the right kind of breathing air ; but I never supposed 
there was so much death in the pot as that comes to. But that 
fact which you build upon — the amount of vital air a person 
destroys an hour — I am afraid, doctor, you got it only out of 
the books, which I am rather shy in trusting for what I call 
gospel." 

'' Both from books and my own imperfect experiments," 
replied Lincoln, " and I am satisfled that the proportion is not 
rated too highly. But I have not quite done all that I pro- 
pose in this case. We have now been in the room, I perceive 
by my watch, but three quarters of an hour, while there are 
not probably over thirty persons present. And yet, even in 
this time, and with this number, I will ask you all, if you do 
not feel oppressed and uneasy from the impurity of the air 
here ? " 

" I do — and I — and I too," responded several ; while others, 
as the case was thus now brought home to their own senses, 
which plainly spoke in the affirmative, sprang forward in 
alarm to throw open the doors. 

" Not yet — not yet," said the doctor, interposing. " We can 
live awhile longer ; and I wish in some degree to satisfy you, 
and particularly Captain Bunker here, whose thorough mode 
of coming at results I much admire, that what I have said is 
not altogether incapable of proof, even with the means at hand. 
Cannot our carpenter here, with a few minutes' work, so alter 
the casings, that the upper sashes of these windows can be 
lowered some few inches ? " 



THE SCHOOL IN THE HORN OF THE MOON 333 

Locke — who felt both pained and chagrined that his inatten- 
tion to this matter, in which he so well knew all the principles 
involved, should have so nearly led to disastrous consequences, 
and whose active mind, having seen through the whole subject 
at a glance, the moment the doctor put him on the track, had 
long since been engaged in devising a ready remedy for the 
discovered evil — here interposed, and suggested that an open- 
ing made in the centre of the ceiling would best effect the 
object in view. 

" If it can be done ? " inquiringly said the doctor. 

" Be done ! " said Bunker, " yes, it can. Here, carpenter, up 
in this chair with your tools, and make a hole through there, 
in no time. This business is just beginning to get through my 
hair." 

A few moments sufficed to make an aperture about eight 
inches square, opening into the attic story above ; the square 
form being adopted, as best comporting with the simple contri- 
vance with which it was proposed to cover it — that of a mere 
board slide, supported by cleats, in which it would play back 
and forth, as the aperture required to be opened for ventilation, 
or shut to preserve the warmth of the room. Scarcely had the 
workman time to adjust the slide in its place, before every 
particle of impure air had apparently escaped through the 
opening, to pass off by the crevices in thd roof. All felt and 
acknowledged the change with astonishment and delight. The 
sensations of languor and oppression that had begun to weigh 
heavily on the feelings and spirits of the company, had left 
them almost as unexpectedly and suddenly as fell the bundle 
of sins from the back of Bunyan's Pilgrim. 

" Well, gentlemen," said Doctor Lincoln, as he looked round, 
and saw in the speaking countenances of the company that all 
were as well satisfied as they were gratified at the result ; " I 
believe the mystery is now solved. At all events, I'll agree to 
cure for nothing all the scholars that are hereafter made sick 
from anything about the schoolhouse, or in the conduct of 
their master." 



334 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

" Yes, the room is as clear as a horn, by George ! " exclaimed 
Bunker, " and the thing is done — proved out as square as a 
brick, right in our face and eyes ; and there's no getting away 
from it. But what sticks in my crop is, that we must have a 
man — and a book man, too, though he plainly don't swallow 
books whole, without chewing, as most of 'em do — have a man 
come thirty miles to think it out for us ! Master, you and I 
ought to be trounced." 

" Well, Mr. Moderator," said the deacon's tormentor, the 
rustic humorist, we mean, who was the first to take up for 
Locke in the debate, and who now seemed greatly to enjoy the 
triumph of the latter over the little clique of his chop-fallen 
foes — " Well, Mr. Moderator, how is it about the old boy and 
his little blue influences, now ? Don't you think they've pretty 
much all cleared out through that hole up yonder ? Ah ! I 
was about right, deacon : if the old chap had been any great 
affair, he couldn't have crept out through so small a hole as 
that comes to, quite so quick, you may depend on 't." 

But the deacon, who suddenly recollected a promise he had 
made to carry, that night, some thorough-wort to a jaundery 
neighbor, was in too much of a hurry to reply to such scoffing 
questions ; and he, with one or two of his most zealous sup- 
porters, immediately quitted the house, leaving the rest of the 
vanquished party, whether superstitionists or alarmists, to join 
the master and his increasing number of friends, acknowledge 
their error, and reciprocate congratulations on the unexj^ectedly 
happy result of the whole of this singular affair. We say the 
whole ; for, before the company broke up, word was brought 
by one of the larger scholars, who had gone over to Widow 
Marvin's during the meeting, and just returned, that the sick 
boy there had fallen into a quiet sleep, attended by gentle per- 
spiration ; — symptoms which the gratified doctor at once pro- 
nounced to be a plain indication that the disease was going off 
by what he technically termed resolution. And the result, in 
this case at least, went to prove the doctor's skill in prognostics. 
The boy, after that night, was consigned, by his departing phy- 



THE SCHOOL m THE HoUN OF THE MOON 335 

sician, to the care only of his grateful mother, who, within a 
fortnight, had the unspeakable happiness of seeing her darling 
son restored to health and his still loved but now more tem- 
perately pursued studies. 

Of the remainder of young Amsden's career in this district, 
little more need be added. Compared with the trials, vexa- 
tions, and labors of the past, he now found but a path of 
flowers. The recent misfortune in his school, and the conse- 
quent infatuated movement to overthrow him, operating as all 
overwrought persecutions usually do, instead of injuring him, 
were the means of turning the popular current strongly in his 
favor, and of giving him a place in the estimation of nearly all 
around him which he otherwise would have failed to obtain. 

Being no further troubled with the injudicious interference of 
parents, or the misbehavior of their children, — those two evils 
which too often require the best part of a teacher's time and 
attention to meet and overcome — he had nothing to do but 
instruct his pupils. And by no means unprofitably did the 
latter use the opportunity thus afforded them. From a rough, 
wild, unthinking set of creatures, who could appreciate nothing 
but animal pleasures or physical prowess, they became rational 
beings, ambitious for the acquisition of knowledge, and capable 
of intellectual pleasures. A new standard of taste and merit, 
in short, had been imperceptibly raised among them ; and the 
winter that Locke Amsden kept school became an era in the 
district, from which commenced a visible and happy change in 
the whole moral and intellectual tone of its society. 

Nor were the advantages which attended his exertions in 
this place wholly on one side. In teaching others, the master 
himself was often taught. Questions were daily put to him, 
even by children in their abs, which led him to reflection, re- 
search, and discoveries of truths, which, thorough scholar as he 
was, he found, to his surprise, he had before overlooked, and . 
which otherwise might never have occurred to him ; — discov- 
eries, we repeat, of important truths, in almost every study of 
his school, and particularly in those of orthography, orthoepy, 



336 DANIEL PIEBGE THOMPSON 

and etymology, those sadly neglected branches which require 
a philosopher to teach them understandingly, but which are 
yet, oftener than otherwise, intrusted to the teaching of an 
ignoramus ! 

In what is termed a physical education, also, he here re- 
ceived hints which led him to the adoption of much more 
correct and enlarged views than any he had before entertained. 
His attention, indeed, had never been directed to the subject ; 
and he had therefore continued to look upon it as did others 
around him, either as a matter of little importance, or, at best, 
as one which had no legitimate connection with popular edu- 
cation. But the painful and alarming occurrences which we 
have described, as arising from the want of ventilation in his 
schoolhouse, taught him a lesson which could not be disre- 
garded or easily forgotten ; caused him to give an earnest con- 
sideration to this subject in all its bearings, whether in relation 
to ventilation, length of confinement to study, or ease of posi- 
tion ; and forced upon his mind the conviction, that jDhysical 
education, or an observance of those laws of li^ which can only 
insure the health of the body, and the consequent health of the 
mind, is, as truly as any other, a part of an instructor's duty, 
for the performance of which, before high Heaven, he will be 
held responsible. 

The Examination at Mill Town Emporium 

(From " Locke Amsden ; or, the Schoolmaster") 

In his journeys to and from college, at the time of his ma- 
triculation, and afterwards on his occasional brief visits to his 
family, young Amsden had passed through a thriving little 
village, which was generally known by the name of Mill Town, 
but which its ambitious inhabitants had recently thought to 
dignify by re-christening it by the more sonorous and classical 
appellation of Mill Town Emporium. The village, number- 
ing perhaps two hundred souls, contained a store, a tavern, a 
cluster of mills, and several very spruce-looking dwelling- 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 337 

houses, among which the newly painted two-story house of the 
merchant glared in conspicuous whiteness. And, as our hero 
was now on his way homeward, and in search of some good 
situation in a winter's school, which he had neglected to 
secure, — though many eligible ones had been offered him, 
which he had declined on account of their location, — he con- 
cluded to call at this place, in order to ascertain whether he 
might not here obtain a situation, which for him might prove 
a desirable one, as the village was pleasantly located on the 
main road leading to and within half a day's ride from the resi- 
dence of his family, with whom he wished to keep up a per- 
sonal intercourse. 

Upon inquiry of the bustling keeper of the inn where he 
stopped, Locke w^as told that the village school had not yet 
been supplied with a teacher ; and that the managing commit- 
tee, consisting of the merchant of the place, the tailor, and the 
newspaper editor (for a political newspaper called the Blazing 
Star had just been established in this miniature city), " were now 
on the lookout to engage a man of those splendidest qualifica- 
tions which the growing importance of the place demanded." 

Though somewhat startled at this pompous announcement, 
our candidate yet took directions to the house of the mer- 
chant, who, it was said, would probably exercise a rather con- 
trolling influence among this able board of managers. A few 
steps brought him to the showy white house before named, 
as belonging to the popular personage — as an only merchant 
of a little village generally is — of whom he was in quest. On 
applying the knocker, the door was opened by the merchant 
himself, who appeared with a pen behind his ear, and invited 
the other into his sitting-room, where it appeared he had been 
posting his books. He was a youngerly man, of an affectedly 
brisk and courteous manner. Supposing his visitor had called 
for the purposes of trade, he received him with all the smirks 
and bows of a practiced salesman, and began to talk rapidly 
about nothing — i.e., the state of the weather, and the condi- 
tion of the roads for traveling. As soon, however, as Locke 

s. M.— 23 



338 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

announced his name and business, he suddenly became much 
less profuse of his bows and smiles, and, assuming a conse- 
quential air, observed: 

" Why, sir, we are not over-anxious to engage a teacher just 
now — though, to be sure, we have so many applications press- 
ing upon us that we shall be compelled to decide soon. But 
you see, sir, we have a flourishing village here. It is thought 
we shall have an academy soon. There are many public- 
spirited and genteel people in the place ; and they will not be 
suited with anything short of a teacher of the most superfine 
qualifications." 

" I trust to be able to answer all reasonable expectations, in 
that respect," remarked Amsden, scarcely able to repress a 
smile at the other's singular application of terms. 

" Presume it — presume it — that is, can't say to the contrary. 
But do you bring any letters of credit with you ? " 

"Credentials? I have something of the kind about me, I 
believe; but having seen how easily they are obtained, and 
how little reliance the public place upon them, I thought not of 
offering them, preferring to be examined, and not doubting 
that your committee would be abundantly able to satisfy your- 
selves of my qualifications by such a course much better than 
by a dependence on the certificates of others." 

" That's fair — that's fair, sir. Why, to be sure, I profess to 
know something myself about education, having been to an 
academy a quarter before entering business ; and the gentlemen 
who are committee with me, one the editor of the Blazing Star, 
and the other the merchant tailor of our village, are both men 
of some parts — especially our editor, whom I consider to be a 
man of splendid talents. I will send for them, sir." 

So saying, the merchant committee-man went out and dis- 
patched a boy for his colleagues, who soon made their appear- 
ance, and were thereupon introduced, in due form, to our candi- 
date for the throne of a village school. The new-comers also 
were both men below the middle age. He of the goose (we 
mean no disrespect to that honest calling, who take all the 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 339 

jokes and get all the money) was a man of a fair, feminine 
appearance, of pert, jaunty manners, and of showy dress, done 
in the very extremes of last year's city fashions, though recently 
made, and now worn as a sort of sign-board sample to display 
constantly before the great public of Mill Town Emporium, and 
its tributaries, convincing proof of his signal ability to make 
good the glowing professions of his standing advertisement in 
the Blazing Star, " to be always prepared to cut and make to " 
order after the very latest New York and London fashions." 
The editor was a personage of quite a different appearance. 
He was grave and severe of look, his countenance plainly indi- 
cating how deeply he was conscious of the important respon- 
sibilities of his position, as conductor of the Blazing Star, on 
which the j)olitical destinies of the country so much depended. 

The sage trio, who were to decide on our hero's qualifications 
in the sciences, being thus brought together, the merchant 
announced to his colleagues the cause of the convocation, and 
the progress already made in the business on hand. 

'' Do you teach after the latest style and fashion of teaching, 
sir?" commenced the tailor; "there must be much in that, 
I think. There is nothing like keeping up with the improve- 
ments and latest style of the times, if one calculates to succeed, 
in almost anything, at this day." 

" As far as I could see changes to be improvements,- 1 cer- 
tainly should follow them," replied Locke. 

" Do you teach book-keeping ? " asked the merchant ; " I con- 
sider that to be of the last importance." 

" Literally, so do I, sir. An understanding, and mechanical 
skill of execution, of the principles of penmanship, I consider of 
the first importance ; and, these attained, it may be lastly im- 
portant that the pupil be instructed in book-keeping," answered 
Locke, without observing the air of pique which became visible 
in the countenance of the interrogator at this answer. 

" I feel impelled by my sense of duty to my country," said 
the editor, " to make a preliminary question. And I trust the 
gentleman will excuse my desire to know which of the two 



840 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

great political parties of the day he supj^orts. This I would not 
consider a sine qua non^ or even very important, at some periods 
in our public affairs; but when, as now, I see an obnoxious 
party power stalking through the land, like the besom of de- 
struction, to overthrow the sacred liberties of the country, I do 
hold it an imperious duty to know the principles of those we 
encourage ; not because I should fear that one of that party, 
whose further increase I so much deprecate, could exercise a 
pernicious influence in our intelligent village, where, since the 
establishment of the Blazing Star, the political views of the 
people, I am proud to say, are so generally correct — no, not at 
all on that account, but for the inherent principle of the thing." 

" I have never," replied Locke, utterly surprised that a test- 
question of this kind should be put to him, " I have never, till 
within the present year, been qualified by age for a voter. I 
have examined the leading jDrinciples of our government, it 
is true, and I much admire them; but, supposing that the 
opposing parties of the day were all mainly agreed in their 
aims to sustain those principles, and were, after all, only dis- 
puting about men, or at the worst, the different means of gain- 
ing the same end, I have so little interested myself in party 
questions, that I have as yet formed no decided preferences for 
either side." 

" You are mistaken, sir," rejoined the editor. " If you sup- 
pose that both parties are for sustaining the same principles, 
you are most " 

The speaker was here interrupted by a smart rap of the 
knocker without. The merchant sjDrang to the door, and soon 
ushered into the room a personage alike unexpected and un- 
known to all present. His appearance at once showed him to 
be a person of many airs, with no lack of confidence in himself. 
He carried a tasseled cane, and wore a showy safety chain, 
with an abundance of watch seals, to say the least, dangling 
from his pocket, while his dress was what has significantly 
been termed the shabby genteel. After inquiring if the gentle- 
* an indispensable condition 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 341 

men present were the school committee, he announced his busi- 
ness, which, to the surprise, and, it must be confessed, somewhat 
to the uneasiness of our hero, proved to be the same that had 
prompted his own call. The committee, however, seemed very 
far from looking upon the visit of the stranger as an intrusion ; 
and, apprising him that they bad just commenced the exami- 
nation of one candidate, they told him " the more the merrier," 
as it would afford them a better chance for selection, and 
invited him to make number two ; which, being assented to, 
they proceeded with the examination. 

" What are your views, Mr. Blake — for that, I think, you told 
me was your name " — said the editor, whose mind was still 
running on the subject on which he was about to be eloquent, 
when interrupted by the entrance of the new candidate ; 
" What are your views of the propriety of instilling correct 
political principles into the minds of your pupils, who are the 
rising generation, and soon to wield the destinies of our glorious 
republic ? " 

" I hold, sir," replied Blake, who, it appeared, had cunningly 
inquired out the calling, politics, etc., of each of the committee, 
before coming near them, — " I do hold, though others may 
disagree with me, that it is rather important to attend to the 
particular you have instigated, sir. I'm always open in my 
politics. I read several articles in a newspaper over at the tav- 
ern, just now, while waiting for my dinner, that speaks my 
sentiments on that head exactly." 

" What paper was it ? " eagerly asked the editor. 

" I didn't mind particularly," replied the other, with affected 
carelessness ; " but I think it was the Star, or some such title." 

" The Blazing Star f " said the former, with a complaisant 
bow. 

" The same," rejoined Blake, " the very same ; I now re- 
call it." 

" That is the paper, sir, which I have the honor of con- 
ducting," said the other, with another bow, and a gracious 
smile. 



842 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

" Indeed ! Why, sir," said Blake, with pretended embarrass- 
ment, " why, sir, had I supposed — but I was so struck with the 
able — I hope you will pardon me, sir, for introducing" 

" Oh, certainly, certainl}^, sir," interrupted the editor. " I feel 
myself both flattered and gratified by your opinions. There, 
gentlemen," he continued, turning with a triumphant air to his 
two associates, " I have done what I considered my duty with 
the candidates, on the point in which I feel a deep interest. I 
am now willing to turn them over to you, for examination in 
the sciences." 

"I should hke to hear what Mr. Blake thinks about teaching 
book-keeping in a school, since T have the misfortune to disagree 
with the other gentleman here," said the merchant. 

" Book-keeping ? " said Blake, instantly catching a hint from 
the last part of the other's observation. " Oh, book-keeping is 
quite essential — quite, sir, quite ; I always learn it to my 
pupils." 

" I think so ; I think it's an important item in the account," 
responded the merchant, glancing round at his colleagues, 
significantly, as he threw himself back with a self-satisfied air. 

" I have a boy," said the tailor, " whom is pretty cute in 
grammar, as all allow; and I would be pleased to hear the 
gentlemen explain on that department, and tell whether their 
mode and manner of teaching it is of the latest style ? " 

Mr. Blake here being not so prompt as usual in taking the 
lead, Amsden briefly but clearly explained the first principles 
of English Grammar, the object and uses of that branch, and 
his manner of teaching it by the text books of Murray and 
others. The other candidate, after waiting till pressed to give 
his views in so pointed a manner, that he saw no way to avoid 
saying something on the subject — with some hesitation ob- 
served : 

" Well, gentlemen, my notions about grammar may be dif- 
ferent from others, perhaps yours. Now my sentiments is some- 
thing like this : — the true use of grammar is to learn 'em sense. 
Well, in what the gentleman here calls parsing Syntax, I, now, 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 343 

should make my scholars find out the sense of a piece. And 
if they can do that, it is all I should require ; because the only 
use of grammar being to learn 'em the sense, as I said, why, the 
work is done, ain't it ? I take it so, gentlemen. But suppose 
they can't do this, then I should take the piece in hand my- 
self; and if I could not make sense out of it then I should 
call it false grammar, that's all. So when I have my scholars 
write compositions, I square the grammar of their pieces upon 
the sense they contain ; for where there's sense, there must, in 
course, be grammar ; and visy versy. Now that's my system, 
gentlemen. For I have no notion of spoiling sense to make it 
fay in with book rules ; but I make the grammar come down 
to the sense, not the sense give up to the grammar." 

" Just my sentiments, to a shaving ! " exclaimed the mer- 
chant. " I used to study grammar when at the academy, and 
bothered and bothered to parse by the rules; but I never could 
see the use of it. And now, in my business letters, I never 
think of trying to write by any of the rules I learnt; and yet 
I write grammar, because I write sense, as he says. Yes, them's 
my sentiments about grammar," 

" Well, it does look kinder reasonable," said the tailor, " though 
my boy learnt the rules. Syntax, and catemology, and all ; and 
I don't know what he would say to leaving 'em off. But per- 
haps this way of teaching grammar the gentleman speaks of is 
some new imported fashion that's soon to be all the style?" 
he added, inquiringly looking at the patent grammarian who 
had just before spoken. 

" Precisely," answered the other,' with a conciliating nod ; " it 
is indeed, sir, a new system, of the very latest cut." 

" I am satisfied, then, sir," rejoined the other. 

"Which is the most useful rule in arithmetic, Mr. Amsden?" 
asked the merchant. " I profess to know something about that." 

" Why, that would be nearly as difficult to tell, I imagine, 
as regards all the fundamental rules, as it would be to point 
out the most useful wheel of a watch, in which all the wheels 
are required to keep the whole in motion," replied Locke. 



344 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

" Now I don't think so," said the questioner ; " but I'll ask 
Mr. Blake." 

" Oh, I say the rule that helps a man most to do business by, 
and you know quite well what that is, I fancy ; for you tell 
what the articles j^ou sell come to by that," observed Blake, 
obsequiously bowing to the merchant. 

" Ay; I see you are a j)ractical man, Mr. Blake," here chimed 
in the editor ; "' and such men are the very nerves and sinews 
of our republic." 

" I care less about that," rejoined the merchant ; " but I must 
say I approve the gentleman's views of grammar and arith- 
metic. But suppose we now pass on to geography 

" How do you bound the Polar Sea, Mr. Amsden ? " 

" Which Polar Sea ? " asked Locke, quite innocently. 

" Why, the Frozen Sea, to be sure," said the other. 

" I must still ask to which Polar or Frozen Sea you refer, 
sir, before I can answer your question," said the former ; " the 
Northern or Southern ? " 

"Well, that beats me," observed the erudite dealer; "I had 
supposed the Frozen Ocean was, of course, in the north ; for 
we all know that the farther we go north, the colder it is ; and 
the farther we go south, the warmer it is. Don't you think so, 
Mr. Blake?" 

" Why, I had thought so, certainly," responded Blake, glanc- 
ing at Amsden with a supercilious smile — " not- that I have any 
wish to expose anybody's ignorance, by any means ; but being 
appealed to in the matter, so, it's but civil to answer the ques- 
tion. And, now I am speaking on the subject of geographical 
literature, I may as well, gentlemen," he continued — deeming 
it now a favorable time to press the advantage he supposed he 
had gained over his rival, by an extra display of his erudition 
— " I may as well tell you at once that I rather pride myself 
on my knowledge of terrestrial geography, anc'. my improved 
modes of teaching it. I teach it almost entirely by maps, and 
the map-making process. And it would astonish you to see 
how quick scholars, in this way, will become accomplished geo- 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 345 

graphians. I learn 'em, in a very short time, also, to make the 
most splendid maps, equal, nearly, to the printed ones, of all 
sorts and sizes, both on Mercator's project, as they call it, and 
on the principle of circular latitudes. Nor is this but a small 
part of the embellishments I teach my scholars, when they 
have the proper instruments to work with. There's the prob- 
lems and the circles, the squares, triangular geometry, ovals, 
perspective configurations, and a thousand curious things I 
could teach, if I only had the instruments; such as Gunter's 
dividers, circumflutors, and the like. And then I would teach 
musical psalmody, of evenings, for nothing, which, as I see you 
are about building a new church here, might be an object. In 
short, gentlemen, I should be very happy to add my best powers 
in accomplishing your children, and helping to build up your 
flourishing village. But I leave the decision to you, gentlemen, 
with the greatest pleasure ; because I have discovered you to be 
men of the most ecstatic discernment." 

As soon as the speaker had fairly delivered himself of this 
learned harangue, Amsden, who knew not which most to ad- 
mire, the effrontery and ignorance of the fellow, or the igno- 
rance and blindness of the committee who seemed so readily 
to swallow all he said — inquired if there was not some man of 
science in the place who could be called in to conduct the 
examination, and assist the committee in deciding upon the 
merits of the applicants now before them. This inquiry, as 
reasonable and fair as was its obvious object, produced, as a 
close observer might have easily seen, considerable sensation in 
the before well-assured mind of Locke's exulting competitor; 
and his uneasiness was the next moment increased into down- 
right apprehension by a remark of the tailor, who, in a rather 
hesitating manner, said : 

" Why, there's the minister that preaches half the time here 
— and he's now in the place, I guess. He's a college-learnt 
man, they say, and would be willing to come in, perhaps, 
if " 

" Why, if these gentlemen," interrupted Blake, rising in visi- 



346 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

ble agitation, " if these gentlemen don't consider themselves 
capable of deciding on our qualifications and embellishments, 

then, I say, I am willing — perfectly willing, I say, too " 

" Well, I am not," interposed the luminous head of the Blaz- 
ing Star, with much decision. " I shall most pointedly object 
to that measure. I should consider it as no less than involv- 
ing an approach to a sanction of that never-to-be-enough repro- 
bated doctrine of the union of church and state. And I should 
raise my voice " 



" Ah ! I think we can get along," said the merchant, breaking 
in on the latter, and now rising and looking at his watch with 
an impatient and irritated air, " I think we can get along with- 
out the help of the minister in this business. And if the two 
gentlemen," he continued, with rather a discriminating gesture, 
" will step into the other room, or over to the tavern, we can 
probably come to a decision of the case without much trouble, I 
think." 

The two candidates accordingly retired,' — Blake into the 
adjoining room, and Amsden, as was doubtless intended, to 
the tavern, — to give to the astute trio of examiners an oppor- 
tunity for private deliberation. 

" Shall we mark, gentlemen ? " said the merchant, cutting 
three separate slips of paper, and passing two of them to his 
colleagues, with a pencil, that each might write the name of 
the candidate he would select, and present it for comparison 
with those of the others, after the manner of appraising a horse. 

" Well, if I was fully satisfied about Mr. Blake's grammar " — 
said the tailor, doubtingly, holding his pencil over his paper. 

" I am satisfied about it well enough for my case," observed 
the merchant, dashing down the chosen name with a decisive 
sweep of the hand. 

" And so am I," responded the editor ; " and what is more, he 
is sound in political principles, to the core." 

" Oh, I ain't strenuous, gentlemen," said the tailor, following 
the example of the others in filling his blank. 

The three slips, with the written sides downward, were then 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILI TOWN EMPORIUM 347 

held up together, and turned over, bringing the name on each 
to view. And it was Blake — Blake — Blake ! 

"As I sujDposed," said the merchant; "just as I knew it 
must be. Boy," he continued, opening the door leading into 
the kitchen, " you may step over to the tavern, and say to the 
gentleman who just went from here, that he needn't trouble 
himself to call again. And, here ! take this decanter, and get 
it filled with the best wine at the store. We will call in Mr. 
Blake, and settle the terms with him, over a bottle of my nice 
Madeira; for I feel like taking a bumper on the occasion." 

Meanwhile Locke, who was traveling horseback, but too well 
anticipating the result of the deliberation just described, had 
ordered his horse to the door, and stood impatiently waiting 
for some sign or message from the white house, which should 
apprise him of the decision of the committee. The message 
came even sooner than he expected, and was delivered by the 
boy literally, and no less cavalierly than it was indited by his 
master. The next' instant our rejected candidate was in his 
saddle, and leaving Mill Town Emporium at a pace which 
his sober steed appeared to wonder should be required by one 
who before had shown himself so moderate and gentle a rider. 

As soon as his feelings, smarting with chagrin and vexation 
at his mortifying defeat, and the folly and ignorance which, he 
believed, alone had occasioned it, — as soon as his excited feel- 
ings had sufficiently subsided to permit of connected thought, 
he reined his thankful horse into a walk, to try to review the 
novel occurrences he had just witnessed, and bestow upon them 
something like sober reflection. 

" What does education avail me ? " he despondingl}^ solilo- 
quized, as he thought over his recent reception, and how he 
had been set aside for an ignorant coxcomb, or at best a pitiful 
smatterer. " The more I study, the worse I succeed. Yes, what 
avails all this intellectual toil, if my acquirements thereby are 
to be thus rewarded?" And as he pondered upon these dis- 
couraging circumstances, he almost resolved to abandon forever 
all thought of that noble employment to which he had so often 



348 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

declared his intention to devote himself. Locke had, thus far, 
had no acquaintance with aught but country life, with which 
he had been accustomed to associate ideas of comparative 
ignorance and degradation, while his mind had been directed 
to villages and cities, as the exclusive seats of intelligence and 
refinement. Like many another modest country lad of merit, 
he would have bowed in deference to the pert dashing villager 
or citizen, as his supposed superior, when the latter, probably, 
possessed not a tithe of his own worth in all that should consti- 
tute true excellence of character. For he had not learned that 
the people of cities and villages, as a mass, are, generally, less 
thinking, and often, less reading communities, than those formed 
of the residents of the country, who, finding themselves out- 
shone by the former in external appearance, are thus driven to 
depend more on intrinsic qualities on which to base a reputa- 
tion, leaving the others to dazzle by show, and, too often only, 

" To measure their worth by the cloth of their coats." 

It was not very strange, therefore, that with impressions and 
views like those just named, contracted through a limited knowl- 
edge of the world, young Amsden should have presented him- 
self at Mill Town with a high opinion of the intelligence of its 
inhabitants, or that his disappointment should be great at find- 
ing things so exactly the reverse of what he had anticipated. 
A knowledge of the world as it is would have taught him that 
what he had witnessed was no miracle, even in the most favored 
parts of our land of boasted intelligence ; and it might have 
taught him also, that he who would succeed must always, in 
some measure, adapt the means he employs to the compass of 
the minds of those with whom he desires success. 

As Locke was slowly jogging onward, deeply engrossed in 
reflections which grew out of the occasion, and no less deeply 
dejected in spirits at the dark and discouraging prospects before 
him, he met a man in a sulky, who, in passing him, suddenly 
halted and pronounced his name. Looking up at the trav- 
eler, now for the first time, the former at once recognized him 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 849 

to be no other than Dr. Lincoln, the kind and gifted physician 
with whom he had formed so interesting an acquaintance at 
his school in the Horn of the Moon. 

" Why, this is a singular affair, this meeting you just at this 
time and place," said the doctor, gayly, after the usual saluta- 
tions had been exchanged. '' I am almost minded to quote a 
homely old proverb ; for I have not traveled forty rods since I 
was thinking of 3^ou, and really wishing that I knew where you 
might be found. But more of that anon. How has the world 
used you since I parted with you, Mr. Amsden ? " 

" Mainly well — quite so, indeed, if I except a little vexation 
of to-day's occurrence." 

" And what has crossed your path to-day of an unpleasant 
nature ? I perceived at the first glance that your countenance 
wore a look of dejection that did not formerly belong to it." 

"-Oh, it is nothing of consequence, sir." 

" In one sense, it may be. I have long since observed, sir, 
that there is no way in which a disturbed mind can be sooner 
restored to its natural equilibrium than by a disclosure of its 
burden to others ; even though it receive no sympathy in 
return. We are made social beings ; and the law of our nature 
cannot be contravened with impunity here, any more than in 
more important matters. The cause of your trouble is none 
of my business to be sure ; but a communication of it, I will 
venture to say, will lighten jomv heart. And it is best to enjoy 
all the happiness we can get, you know. So let us have your 
story." 

Struck with the kind interest which the other seemed to take 
in his concerns, Locke proceeded to give him a minute detail of 
all the circumstances attending his application for the school 
in the village he had just left, his examination, and the result 
of the whole affair. 

" And what opinion did you form of your successful rival ? " 
asked the doctor, after indulging in a hearty laugh at some 
parts of the story. 

" Why, that he was a pitiful ignoramus, to be sure." 



850 DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON 

"Undoubtedly; but yet a fellow of considerable tact and a 
pretty keen insight into the weaknesses of men, and the un- 
worthy passions and selfish motives that too often govern them. 
And all this he had need of, to succeed upon pretensions so 
ridiculous ; but with it, you see, he did succeed, and that too, 
at fearful odds against him. With what low cunning he first 
inquired the characters of the committee ! — for such, as you 
suppose, was probably the case. And then how eagerly he 
seized on the first opportunity to bedaub them with flattery, 
rightly judging that, in this instance, the words of the poet 
would hold good, 

' flattery never seems absurd — 

The flattered always take your word.' 

And having thus secured the feelings and prejudices of the 
committee for himself, he appears fairly to have exemplified, 
with them, the truth of another line of the same writer, by 
making 

' Impossibilities seem just.' 

Indeed, sir, I think the fellow, who may be a broken-down 
pedler, or possibly a discarded subscription agent of catch- 
penny books or periodicals, managed his slender stock in trade 
to pretty good advantage. I see but one blunder that need at 
all to have endangered him with his learned examiners, — that 
was his mention of ' circumjiutors,' meaning, probably, to have 
hit on circumferentors, of which he might have heard from 
some students or surveyors with whom he chanced to fall in 
company, perhaps. But even that blunder, it seems, passed 
unnoticed. Oh, yes," continued the doctor, with an ironical 
smile, " this fellow managed his part to admiration. But what 
shall we say of that committee, who, both through ignorance 
and will, have thus betrayed their trust ? And, furthermore, 
what shall we say of the people of that village, who so blindly 
conferred that important trust on such men ? But we may 
spare words ; for the employment of this impostor will fall as a 
judgment on their children, in the shape of errors imbibed, that 



THE EXAMINATION AT MILL TOWN EMPORIUM 351 

will sufficiently punish these people for their unpardonable 
blindness and folly. And I will here tell you, Mr. Amsden, we 
have more to do in improving the condition of our common 
schools than to increase the number of qualified teachers. We 
have got to appoint managing committees who are qualified 
to discover and appreciate them. But enough of this ; where 
do you think of looking for a school now, my dear sir ? " 

" I know not where to look, or what to do," replied Locke, 
despondingly. " I am poor, and need, particularly at this time, 
the amount of what would be respectable wages. But our 
country schools afford so little remuneration; and as for the 
villages, you see what my success is with them." 

" Don't despair quite so soon, sir," said Lincoln, a little 
roguishly ; " you may find some men in other villages of a 
little larger pattern than that of the learned trio you just en- 
countered. What say you to coming to Cartersville and taking 
the school in the district where I live ? " 

" I would," replied Locke, " if you were to be the examining 
committee." 

" Well, I shall be," rejoined the doctor, " for all the examina- 
tion I shall want of you." 

" How am I to take you, sir ? " asked the former with a 
doubtful air. 

" Why, that, as it strangely happens, I am sole committee 
myself," answered the doctor. 



CHARLES DICKENS 

181 2-1870 

Charles Dickens was born at Landport, in Portsea, England, in 
1812. His father was at that time a clerk in the marine service, and 
subsequently became a reporter of debates in Parliament. The greater 
part of the life of the great novelist was spent in London, and no man 
was ever more fully and intimately acquainted witli the myriad phases 
of life in the world's metrojDolis. Glimpses of the early years of 
Dickens are found in his novels, particularly in' "David Copperfield." 
In his young manhood he studied law — to please his father, but soon 
abandoned the attorney's office to become a reporter for the press. In 
this capacity he studied human life and character from observation. 
' ' Sketches by Boz, " in the Chronicle, first brought him reputation as 
an author. "The Pickwick Papers," "Nicholas Nickleby, " "Oliver 
Twist," "Old Curiosity Shop," and " Barnaby Pudge '' followed; and 
when, in 1842, Dickens made a visit to the United States, he was a rec- 
ognized star in the literary firmament. The " American Notes " and 
"Martin Chuzzlewit," which soon afterward appeared, were not very 
favorable to Americans. Mr. Dickens established in London the Daily 
News, from which he soon retired, and, later, he became the editor 
of Household Words, which developed into All The Year Round. In 
this his later novels appeared, as serials. In 1867 he re-visited America, 
and was cordially received. Among his greater works are "Dombey 
and Son," "David Copperfield," "Bleak House," "Little Dorrit," 
" Our Mutual Friend," " A Tale of Two Cities," and "The Mystery of 
Edwin Drood." The latter was unfinished when the author died, 
worn out by overwork. The end came in 1870. 

Characterization 

As for the charities of Mr. Dickens, multiplied kindnesses which he 
has conferred upon us all, upon our children, upon people educated 
and uneducated, upon the myriads who speak our common tongue, 
have not you, have not I, all of us, reason to be thankful to this kind 
friend, who soothed and charmed so many hours, brought pleasure 
and laughter to so many homes, made such multitudes of children 
happy, endowed us with such a sweet store of gracious thoughts, fair 
352 



DR. BLIMBER'8 SCHOOL 353 

I 

fancies, soft sympathies, hearty enjoyments ? . . . I may quarrel 
with Mr. Dickens's art a thousand and a thousand times; I delight and 
wonder at his genius; I recognize in it — I speak with awe and reverence 
— a commission from that Divine Beneficence whose blessed task we 
know it will one day be to wipe every tear from every eye. Thank- 
fully I take my share of the feast of love and kindness which this 
,; gentle and generous and charitable soul has contributed to the happi- 
I ness of the world. I take and enjoy my share, and say a benediction 
for the meal. William Makepeace Thackeray. 

Were all his books swept by some intellectual catastrophe out of 
the world, there would still exist in the woi'ld some score, at least, of 
people — with all those ways and sayings we are more intimately ac- 
quainted with than with those of our brothers and sisters, — who would 
owe to him their being. While we live and while our children live, 
Sam Weller and Dick Swivellei', Mr. Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp, the 

Micawbers and the Squeerses, can never die They are more 

real than we are ourselves, and will outlive and outlast us as they 
have outlived their creator. This is the one proof of genius which no 
critic, not the most carping or dissatisfied, can gainsay. 

"Blackwood's Magazine." 

Dr. Blimber's School 

(From " Dombey and Son ") 

Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor 
Blimber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight 
squeeze. The Doctor only undertook the charge of ten young 
gentlemen, but he had, aIwa3^s ready, a supply of learning for 
a hundred, on the lowest estimate ; and it was at once the 
business and delight of his life to gorge the unhaj)py ten 
with it. 

In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hot-house, 
in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. 
All the boys blew before their time. Mental green peas were 
produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year 
round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too) were 
common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, 
under Dr. Blimber's cultivation. Every description of Greek 
and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys, under 
s. ji.— 33 



354 CHARLES DICKENS 

the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at 
all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, 
Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other. 

This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of 
forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was 
not the right taste about the premature productions, and they 
didn't keep well. Moreover, one young gentleman, with a 
swollen nose and an excessively large head (the oldest of the 
ten, who had "gone through" everything), suddenly left off 
blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere 
stalk. And people did say that the Doctor had rather over- 
done it with young Toots, and that when he began to have 
whiskers he left off having brains. 

There young Toots was, at any rate ; possessed of the gruffest of 
voices and the shrillest of minds; sticking ornamental pins into 
his shirt, and keeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket to put on 
his little finger by stealth, when the pupils went out walking : 
constantly falling in love by sight with nursery-maids, who had 
no idea of his existence; and looking at the gas-lighted world 
over the little iron bars in the left-hand corner window of the 
front three pairs of stairs, after bedtime, like a greatly over- 
grown cherub who had sat up aloft much too long. 

The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with 
strings at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a 
bald head, highly polished ; a deep voice ; and a chin so very 
double, that it was a wonder how he ever managed to shave 
into the creases. He had likewise a pair of little eyes that 
were always half shut up, and a mouth that was always half 
expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a boy, 
and were waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, 
that when the Doctor put his right hand into the breast of his 
coat, and with his other hand behind him, and a scarcely per- 
ceptible wag of his head, made the commonest observation to 
a nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment from the Sphinx, 
and settled his business. 

The Doctor's was a mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not 



DR. BLIMBEB'S SCHOOL 355 

a joyful style of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad- 
colored curtains, whose proportions were spare and lean, hid 
themselves despondently behind the windows. The tables and 
chairs were put away in rows, like figures in a sum; fires were 
so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt like 
wells, and a visitor represented the bucket; the dining-room 
seemed the last place in the world where any eating or drink- 
ing was likely to occur ; there was no sound through all the 
house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made 
itself audible in the very garrets ; and sometimes a dull crying 
of young gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings of an 
assemblage of melancholy pigeons. 

Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, dH 
no soft violence to the gravity of the house. There was no 
light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short 
and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with 
working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your 
live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead — stone 
dead — and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul. 

Mrs. Blimber, her mamma, was not learned herself, but she 
pretended to be, and that did quite as well. She said, at even- 
ing parties, that if she could have known Cicero, she thought 
she could have died contented. It was the steady joy of her 
life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen go out walking, unlike 
all other young gentlemen, in the largest possible shirt collars 
and the stifFest possible cravats. It was so classical, she said. 

As to Mr. Feeder, B.A., Doctor Blimber's assistant, he was a 
kind of human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which 
he was continually working, over and over again, without any 
variation. He might have been fitted up with a change of 
barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his destiny had been favor- 
able ; but it had not been ; and he had only one, with which, 
in a monotonous round, it was his occupation to bewilder the 
young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young gentlemen. The young 
gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They 
knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage 



856 ^ CHARLES DICKENS 

noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of 
exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the 
forcing system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his 
spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the world on 
his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments 
against his parents or guardians in four ; he was an old misan- 
thrope in five ; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth 
in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived 
at the conclusion, from which he never afterward departed, 
that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were 
a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other 
meaning in the world. 

But he went on, blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hot-house, 
all the time ; and the Doctor's glory and reputation were great 
when he took his wintry growth home to his relations and 
friends. 

Upon the Doctor's door-steps, one day, Paul stood with a 
fluttering heart, and with his small right hand in his father's. 
His other hand was locked in that of Florence. How tight the 
tiny pressure of that one ; and how loose and cold the other ! 

Mrs. Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plum- 
age and her hooked beak, like a bird of ill omen. She was out 
of breath — for Mr. Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked 
fast — and she croaked hoarsely as she waited for the opening of 
the door. 

" Now, Paul," said Mr. Dombey exultingly, " this is the way 
indeed to be Dombey and Son, and have money. You are 
almost a man already." 

" Almost," returned the child. 

Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and 
quaint, yet touching look with which he accompanied the 
reply. 

It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr. 
Dombey 's face ; but, the door being opened, it was quickly 
gone. 

" Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe ? " said Mr. Dombey. 



DR. BLIMBEWS SCHOOL 357 

The man said yes ; and, as they passed in, looked at Paul as 
if he were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was 
a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early 
dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was mere imbecility ; 
but Mrs. Pipchin took it into her head that it was impudence, 
and made a snajD at him directly. 

" How dare you laugh behind the gentleman's back ? " said 
Mrs. Pipchin. " And what do you take me for? " 

" I ain't a laughing at nobody, and I'm sure I don't take you 
for nothing, ma'am ! " returned the young man in consterna- 
tion. 

" A pack of idle dogs ! " said Mrs. Pipchin, " only fit to be 
turnspits. Go and tell your master that Mr. Dombey's here, or 
it'll be worse for you ! " 

The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge 
himself of this commission ; and soon came back to invite them 
to the Doctor's study. 

" You're laughing again, sir," said Mrs. Pipchin, when it came 
to her turn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall. 

" I ain't," returned the young man, grievously oppressed. " I 
never see such a thing as this ! " 

" What is the matter, Mrs. Pipchin ? " said Mr. Dombey, look- 
ing round. " Softly ! Pray ! " 

Mrs. Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young 
man as she passed on, and said, " Oh ! he was a precious fel- 
low " — leaving the young man, who was all meekness and 
incapacity, affected even to tears by the incident. But Mrs. 
Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people ; and 
her friends said, who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian 
mines ? 

The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe 
at each knee, books all round him. Homer over the door, and 
Minerva on the mantel-shelf " And how do you do, sir ? " he 
said to Mr. Dombey, " and how is my little friend ? " Grave 
as an organ was the Doctor's speech ; and when he ceased, the 
great clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) to take him 



358 CHARLES DICKENS 

up, and to go on saying, " How, is, ray, lit, tie, friend ? " How, 
is, my, lit, tie, friend ? " over and over and over again. 

The little friend being somewhat too small to be seen at all 
from where the Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the 
Doctor made several futile attempts to get a view of him round 
the legs: which Mr. Dombey perceiving, relieved the Doctor 
from his embarrassment by taking Paul up in his arms, and 
sitting him on another little table, over against the Doctor, in 
the middle of the room. 

" Ha ! " said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his 
hand in his breast. " Now I see my little friend. How do you 
do, my little friend ? " 

The clock in the hall wouldn't subscribe to this alteration in 
the form of words, but continued to repeat " How, is, my, lit, 
tie, friend? how, is, my, lit, tie, friend?" 

" Very well, I thank you, sir," returned Paul, answering the 
clock quite as much as the Doctor. 

" Ha ! " said Doctor Blimber. " Shall we make a man of 
him?" 

" Do you hear, Paul ? " added Mr. Dombey ; Paul being 
silent. 

" Shall we make a man of him ? " repeated the Doctor. 

" I had rather be a child," replied Paul. 

" Indeed ! " said the Doctor. " Why ? " 

The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious 
expression of suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one 
hand proudly on his knee, as if he had the rising tears beneath 
it, and crushed them. But his other hand strayed a little 
way the while, a little further— further from him yet — until 
it lighted on the neck of Florence. " This is why," it seemed 
to say, and then the steady look was broken up and gone ; the 
working lip was loosened ; and the tears came streaming forth. 

" Mrs. Pipchin," said his father in a querulous manner, " I 
am really very sorry to see this." 

" Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey," quoth the matron. 

" Never mind," said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head to 



DB. BLIMBEB\S SCHOOL 359 

keep Mrs. Pipchin back. " Ne-ver mind ; we shall substitute 
new cares and new impressions, Mr. Dombey, very shortly. 
You would still wish my little friend to acquire " 

" Everything, if 3'ou please, Doctor," returned Mr. Dombey 
firmly. 

" Yes," said the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes and his 
usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest 
that might attach to some choice little animal he was going to 
stuff. " Yes, exactly. Ha ! We shall impart a great variety 
of information to our little friend, and bring him quickly for- 
ward, I dare say. I . dare say. Quite a virgin soil, I believe 
you said, Mr. Dombey ? " 

" Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this 
lady," replied Mr. Dombey, introducing Mrs. Pipchin, who 
instantly communicated a rigidity to her whole muscular sys- 
tem, and snorted defiance beforehand, in case the doctor should 
disparage her ; " except so far, Paul has, as yet, applied him- 
self to no studies at all." 

Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such 
insignificant poaching as Mrs. Pipchin's, and said he was glad 
to hear it. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing 
his hands, to begin at the foundation. And again he leered at 
Paul, as if he would have liked to tackle him with the Greek 
alphabet on the spot. 

"That circumstance, indeed. Doctor Blimber," pursued Mr. 
Dombey, glancing at his little son, " and the interview I have 
already had the pleasure of holding with you, render any fur- 
ther explanation, and consequently, any further intrusion on 
your valuable time, so unnecessary, that " 

" Now, Miss Dombey ! " said the acid Pipchin. 

" Permit me," said the Doctor, " one moment. Allow me to 
present Mrs. Blimber and my daughter, who will be associated 
with the domestic life of our young Pilgrim to Parnassus. Mrs. 
Blimber," — for the lady, who had perhaps been in waiting, 
opportunely entered, followed by her daughter, that fair sexton 
in spectacles, — " Mr. Dombey. My daughter Corneliaj Mr. Dom,- 



360 CHARLES DICKENS 

bey. Mr. Dombey, my love," jDursued the Doctor, turning to 
his wife, " is so confiding as to — Do you see our little friend ? " 

Mrs. Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr. Dom- 
bey was the object, apparently did not, for she was backing 
against the little friend, and very much endangering his posi- 
tion on the table. But, on this hint, she turned to admire his 
classical and intellectual lineaments, and turning again to Mr. 
Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she envied his dear son. 

" Like a bee, sir," said Mrs. Blimber, with uplifted eyes, " about 
to plunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets 
for the first time. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. 
What a world of honey have we here ! It may appear remark- 
able, Mr. Dombey, in one who is a wife — the wife of such a hus- 
band " 

" Hush, hush," said Doctor Blimber. " Fie for shame ! " 

" Mr. Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife," said Mrs. 
Blimber with an engaging smile. 

Mr. Dombey answered, " Not at all ; " applying those words, 
it is to be presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness. 

" — And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother 
also — " resumed Mrs. Blimber. 

" And such a mother," observed Mr. Dombey, bowing with 
some confused idea of being complimentary to Cornelia. 

" But really," pursued Mrs. Blimber, " I think if I could have 
known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his 
retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum !), I could have 
died contented." 

A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr. Dom- 
bey half believed this was exactly his case ; and even Mrs. 
Pipchin, who was not, as we have seen, of an accommodating 
disposition generally, gave utterance to a little sound between 
a groan and a sigh, as if she would have said that nobody 
but Cicero could have proved a lasting consolation under that 
failure of the Peruvian mines, but that he indeed would have 
been a very Davy-lamp of refuge. 

Cornelia looked at Mr. Dombey through her spectacles as if 



DR. BLIMBEW8 SCHOOL 36 L 

she would have Hked to crack a few quotations with him from 
the authority in question. But this design, if she entertained 
it, was frustrated by a knock at the room -door. 

'^Who is that?" said the Doctor. "Oh! Come in, -Toots; 
come in. Mr. Dombey, sir." Toots bowed. " Quite a coinci- 
dence ! " said Doctor Bhmber. " Here we have the beginning 
and the end. Alpha and Omega. Our head boy, Mr. Dombey." 

The Doctor might have called him their head-and-shoulders 
boy, for he was at least that much taller than any of the rest. 
He blushed very much at finding himself among strangers, 
and chuckled aloud. 

" An addition to our little Portico, Toots," said the Doctor ; 
" Mr. Dombey's son." 

Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn 
silence which prevailed, that he was expected to say something, 
said to Paul, " How are you ? " in a voice so deej), and a man- 
ner so sheepish, that if a lamb had roared it couldn't have been 
more surprising. 

" Ask Mr. Feeder, if you please. Toots," said the Doctor, " to 
prepare a few introductory volumes for Mr. Dombey's son, and 
to allot him a convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe 
Mr. Dombey has not seen the dormitories." 

" If Mr. Dombey will walk upstairs," said Mrs. Blimber, " I 
shall be more than proud to show him the dominions of the 
drowsy god." 

With that Mrs. Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, 
and a wiry figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue 
materials, proceeded upstairs with Mr. Dombey and Cornelia ; 
Mrs. Pipchin following, and looking out sharp for her enemy, 
the footman. 

While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding 
Florence by the hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor 
round and round the room, while the Doctor, leaning back in 
his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual, held a book from 
him at arm's length, and read. There was something very 
awful in this manner of reading. It was such a determined, 



362 CHARLES DICKENS 

unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to work. 
It left the Doctor's countenance exposed to view ; and when the 
Doctor smiled auspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or 
shook his head and made wry faces at him as much as to say, 
" Don't tell me, sir ; I know better," it was terrific. 

Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostenta- 
tiously examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his 
half-crowns. But that didn't last long ; for Doctor Blimber, 
happening to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if 
he were going to get up, Toots swiftly vanished, and appeared 
no more. 

Mr. Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming 
down-stairs again, talking all the way ; and presently they 
re-entered the Doctor's study. 

" I hope, Mr. Dombey," said the Doctor, laying down his 
book, " that the arrangements meet your approval ? " 

" They are excellent, sir," said Mr. Dombey. 

" Very fair indeed," said Mrs. PijDchin, in a low voice ; never 
disposed to give too much encouragement. 

" Mrs. Pipchin," said Mr. Dombey, wheeling round, " will, 
with your permission. Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, visit Paul now 
and then." 

"Whenever Mrs. Pipchin pleases," observed the Doctor. 

" Always happy to see her," said Mrs. Blimber. 

" I think," said Mr. Dombey, " I have given all the trouble 
I need, and may take my leave. Paul, my child," — he went 
close to him, as he sat upon the table, — " good-by." 

" Good-by, papa." 

The limp and careless little hand that Mr. Dombey took in 
his was singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he 
had no part in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed 
to him. No, no. To Florence — all to Florence. 

If Mr. Dombey, in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an 
enemy, hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even 
such an enemy might have received the pang that wrung his 
proud heart then as compensation for his injury. 



DR. BLIMBER\S SCHOOL 363 

He bent down over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight 
were dimmed, as he did so, by something that for a moment 
blurred the Kttle face, and made it indistinct to him, his mental 
vision may have been for that short time, the clearer, perhaps. 

" I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and 
Sundays, you know." 

" Yes, papa," returned Paul, looking at his sister. " On 
Saturdays and Sundays." 

" And you'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever 
man," said Mr. Dombey ; " won't you ? " 

" I'll try," returned the child wearily. 

" And you'll soon be grown up now ! " said Mr. Dombey. 

" Oh ! very soon ! " replied the child. Once more the old, 
old look passed rapidly across his features like a strange light. 
It fell on Mrs. Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black 
dress. That excellent ogress stepped forward to take leave and 
to bear off Florence, which she had long been thirsting to do. 
The move on her part roused Mr. Dombey, whose eyes were 
fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head, and pressing 
his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. 
Blimber, and Miss Blimber with his usual polite frigidity, and 
walked out of the study. 

Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, 
Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed 
forward to attend him to the hall ; and thus Mrs. Pipchin got 
into a state of entanglement with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, 
and was crowded out of the study before she could clutch Flor- 
ence. To which happy accident Paul stood afterward indebted 
for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw her 
arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the door- 
way, turned toward him with a smile of encouragement, the 
brighter for the tears through which it beamed. 

It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was 
gone ; and sent the globes, the books, blind Homer, and 
Minerva swimming round the room. But they stopped all of 
a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock in the hall still 



364 CHARLES DIGKEN8 

gravely inquiring, "How, is, my, lit, tie, friend ? how, is, my, 
lit, tie, friend ? " as it had done before. 

He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listen- 
ing. But he might have answered, " Weary, weary ! very 
lonely, very sad ! " And there, with an aching void in his 
young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, 
Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the uphol- 
sterer were never coming. 

After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense 
time to little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came 
back. The Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress 
the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of 
march ; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely 
turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweep toward the 
left ; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same 
manner toward the right. So that he seemed, at every stride 
he took, to look about him as though he were saying, " Can 
anybody have the goodness to indicate any subject, in any 
direction on which I am uninformed ? I rather think not." 

Mrs. Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor's 
company ; and the Doctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, 
delivered him over to Miss Blimber. 

'' Cornelia," said the Doctor, " Dombey will be your charge 
at first. Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on." 

Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor's 
hands; and Paul, feeling that the spectacles were surveying 
him, cast down his eyes. 

" How old are you, Dombey ? " said Miss Blimber. 

" Six," answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the 
young lady, why her hair didn't grow long like Florence's, and 
why she was like a boy. 

" How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dom- 
bey ? " said Miss Blimber. 

" None of it," answered Paul. Feeling that the answer was a 
shock to Miss Blimber's sensibility, he looked up at the three 
faces that were looking down at him, and said : 



DR. BLIMBER'S SCHOOL 365 

" I haven't been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn't 
learn a Latin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old 
Glubb. I wish you'd tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you 
please." 

" What a dreadfully low name ! " said Mrs. Blimber. " Un- 
classical to a degree ! Who is the monster, child ? " 

" What monster ? " inquired Paul. 

" Glubb," said Mrs. Blimber, with a great disrelish. 

" He's no more a monster than you are," returned Paul. 

" What ! " cried the Doctor in a terrible voice. " Ay, ay, ay ? 
Aha! What's that?" 

Paul was dreadfully frightened ; but still he made a stand 
for the absent Glubb, though he did it trembling. 

" He's a very nice old man, ma'am," he said. " He used to 
draw my couch. He knows all about the deep sea, and the 
fish that are in it, and the great monsters that come and lie on 
rocks in the sun, and dive into the water again when they're 
startled, blowing and splashing so, that they can be heard for 
miles. There are some creatures," said Paul, warming with his 
subject, " I don't know how many yards long, and I forget their 
names, but Florence knows, that pretend to be in distress ; and 
when a man goes near them, out of compassion, they open 
their great jaws, and attack him. But all he has got to do," 
said Paul, boldly tendering this information to the very doctor, 
himself, " is to keep on turning as he runs away, and then, as 
they turn slowly, because they are so long, and can't bend, he's 
sure to beat them. And though old Glubb don't know why 
the sea should make me think of my mamma that's dead, or 
what it is that it is always saying — always saying ! he knows a 
great deal about it. And I wish," the child concluded, with a 
sudden falling of his countenance, and failing in his anima- 
tion, as he looked like one forlorn upon the three strange faces, 
" that you'd let old Glubb come here to see me, for I know him 
very well, and he knows me." 

" Ha ! " said the Doctor, shaking his head ; " this is bad, but 
study will do much." 



366 CBARLES DICKENS 

Mrs. Blimber opined, with something hke a shiver, that he 
was an unaccountable child ; and, allowing for the difference 
of visage, looked at him pretty much as Mrs. Pipchin had been 
used to do. 

" Take him round the house, Cornelia," said the doctor, " and 
familiarize him with his new sphere. Go with that young 
lady, Dombey." 

Dombey obeyed : giving his hand to abstruse Cornelia, and 
looking at her sideways, with timid curiosity, as they went 
away together. For her spectacles, by reason of the glistening 
of the glasses, made her so mysterious, that he didn't know 
where she was looking, and was not, indeed, quite sure that she 
had any eyes at all behind them. 

Cornelia took him first to the schoolroom, which was situated 
at the back of the hall, and was approached through two baize 
doors, which deadened and muffled the young gentlemen's 
voices. Here there were eight young gentlemen in various 
stages of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and very 
grave indeed. Toots, as an old hand, had a desk to himself in 
one corner : and a magnificent man, of immense age, he looked, 
in Paul's young eyes behind it. 

Mr. Feeder, B.A., who sat at another little desk, had his Virgil 
stop on, and was slowly grinding that tune to four young gen- 
tlemen. Of the remaining four, two, who grasped their fore- 
heads convulsively, were engaged in solving mathematical 
problems : one with his face like a dirty window, from much 
crying, was endeavoring to flounder through a hopeless number 
of lines before dinner ; and one sat looking at his task in stony 
stupefaction and despair — which it seemed had been his con- 
dition ever since breakfast-time. 

The appearance of a new boy did not create the sensation 
that might have been expected. Mr. Feeder, B.A. (who was in 
the habit of shaving his head for coolness, and had nothing 
but little bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and told him 
he was glad to see him — which Paul would have been very 
glad to have told him, if he could have done so with the least 



BR. BLIMBER'8 SCHOOL 367 

sincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands 
with the four young gentlemen at Mr. Feeder's desk ; then with 
the two young gentlemen at work on the problems, who were 
very feverish ; then with the young gentleman at work against 
time, who was very inky ; and lastly, with the young gentle- 
man in a state of stupefaction, who was flabby and quite 
cold. 

Paul having been already introduced to Toots, that pupil 
merely chuckled and breathed hard, as his custom was, and 
pursued the occupation in which he was engaged. It was not 
a severe one ; for, on account of his having " gone through " so 
much (in more senses than one), and also of his having, as 
before hinted, left off blowing in his prime. Toots now had 
license to pursue his own course of study ; which was chiefly 
to write long letters to himself from persons of distinction, ad- 
dressed " P. Toots, Esquire, Brighton, Sussex," and to preserve 
them in his desk with great care. 

These ceremonies passed, Cornelia led Paul upstairs to the 
top of the house ; which was rather a slow journey, on account 
of Paul being obliged to land both feet on every stair before he 
mounted another. But they reached their journey's end at 
last; and there in a front room, looking over the wild sea, 
Cornelia showed him a nice little bed with white hangings, 
close to the window, on which there was already beautifully 
written on a card in round text — down strokes very thick, and 
up strokes very fine — Dombey ; while two other little bedsteads 
in the same room were announced, through like means, as 
respectively appertaining unto Briggs and Tozer. 

Just as they got down-stairs again into the hall, Paul saw the 
weak-eyed young man, who had given that mortal offense to 
Mrs. Pipchin, suddenly seize a very large drum-stick, and fly 
at a gong that was hanging up, as if he had gone mad, or 
wanted vengeance. Instead of receiving warning, however, or 
being instantly taken into custody, the young man left off un- 
checked, after having made a dreadful noise. Then Cornelia 
Blimber said to Dombey that dinner would be ready in a cpar- 



868 CHARLE8 DICKENS 

ter of an hour, and perhaps he had better go into the school- 
room among his " friends." 

So Dombey, deferentially passing the great clock, which was 
still as anxious as ever to know how he found himself, opened 
the schoolroom door a very little way, and strayed in like a 
lost boy : shutting it after him with some difficulty. His friends 
were all dispersed about the room except the stony friend, who 
remained immovable. Mr. Feeder was stretching himself in 
his gray gown, as if, regardless of expense, he were resolved to 
jDuU the sleeves off. 

" Heigh ho hum ! " cried Mr. Feeder, shaking himself like a 
cart-horse. " Oh dear me, dear me ! Ya-a-a-ah ! " 

Paul was quite alarmed by Mr. Feeder's yawning; it was 
done on such a great scale, and he was so terribly in earnest. 
All the boys, too (Toots excepted), seemed knocked up, and were 
getting ready for dinner — some newly tying their neckcloths, 
which were very stiff indeed ; and others washing their hands, 
or brushing their hair, in an adjoining ante-chamber — as if 
they didn't think they should enjoy it at all. 

Young Toots, who was ready beforehand, and had therefore 
nothing to do, and had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with 
heavy good-nature : 

" Sit down, Dombey." 

" Thank you, sir," said Paul. 

His endeavoring to hoist himself on to a very high window- 
seat, and his slipping down again, appeared to prepare Toots's 
mind for the reception of a discovery. 

"' You're a very small chap," said Mr. Toots. 

" Yes, sir, I'm small," returned Paul. " Thank you, sir." 

For Toots had lifted him into his seat, and done it kindly too. 

" Who's your tailor ? " inquired Toots, after looking at him 
for some moments. 

" It's a woman that has made my clothes as yet," said Paul. 
" My sister's dressmaker." 

"My tailor's Burgess and Co.," said Toots. " Fash'nable. 
But very dear." 



DR. BLIMBER'S SCHOOL 869 

Paul had wit enough to shake his head, as if he would have 
said it was easy to see that; and, indeed, he thought so. 

" Your father's regularly rich, ain't he ? " inquired Mr. Toots. 

" Yes, sir," said Paul. " He's Dombey and Son." 

" And which ? " demanded Toots. 

" And Son, sir," replied Paul. 

Mr. Toots made one or two attempts, in a low voice, to fix 
the firm in his mind ; but not quite succeeding, said he would 
get Paul to mention the name again to-morrow morning, as it 
was rather important. And, indeed, he purposed nothing less 
than writing himself a private and confidential letter from 
Dombey and Son immediately. 

By this time the other pupils (always excepting the stony 
boy) gathered round. They were polite, but pale ; and spoke 
low ; and they were so depressed in their spirits, that, in com- 
parison with the general tone of that company. Master Bither- 
stone was a perfect Miller, or complete Jest Book. And yet he 
had a sense of injury upon him too, had Bitherstone. 

" You sleep in my room, don't you ? " asked a solemn young 
gentleman, whose shirt collar curled up the lobes of his ears. 

" Master Briggs ? " inquired Paul. 

" Tozer," said the young gentleman. 

Paul answered yes ; and Tozer, pointing out the stony pupil, 
said that was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it 
must be either Briggs or Tozer, though he didn't know why. 

" Is yours a strong constitution ? " inquired Tozer. 

Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that he thought not 
also, judging from Paul's looks, and that it was a pity, for it 
need be. He then asked Paul if he were going to begin with 
Cornelia ; and, on Paul saying " Yes," all the young gentlemen 
(Briggs excepted) gave a low groan. 

It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, which 
sounding again with great fury, there was a general move 
toward the dining-room ; still excepting Briggs, the stony boy, 
who remained where he was, and as he was ; and on its way to 
whom Paul presently encountered a round of bread, genteely 

s. M.— 24 



870 0HARLE8 DIGS.E1N8 

served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork lying 
crosswise on the top of it. Doctor Blimber was already in his 
place in the dining-room, at the top of the table, with Miss 
Blimber and Mrs. Blimber on either side of him. Mr. Feeder, 
in a black coat, was at the bottom. Paul's chair was next to 
Miss Blimber ; but it being found, when he sat in it, that his 
eyebrov/s were not much above the level of the table-cloth, some 
books were brought in from the Doctor's study, on which he 
was elevated, and on which he always sat from that time — 
carrying them in and out himself, on after occasions, like a 
little elephant and castle. 

Grace having been said by the doctor, dinner began. There 
was some nice soup; also roast meat, boiled meat, vegetables, 
pie, and cheese. Every young gentleman had a massive silver 
fork, and a napkin ; and all the arrangements were stately and 
handsome. In particular, there was a butler in a blue coat, 
and bright buttons, who gave quite a winy flavor to the table 
beer; he poured it out so superbly. 

Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor Blimber, 
Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber, who conversed occasionally. 
Whenever a young gentleman was not actually engaged with 
his knife and fork or spoon, his eye, with an irresistible attrac- 
tion, sought the eye of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, or Miss 
Blimber, and modestly rested there. Toots appeared to be the 
only exception to this rule. He sat next Mr. Feeder, on Paul's 
side of the table, and frequently looked behind and before the 
intervening boys to catch a glimpse of Paul. 

Only once during dinner was there any conversation that 
included the young gentlemen. It happened at the epoch of 
the cheese, when the Doctor, having taken a glass of port wine, 
and hemmed twice or thrice, said : 

" It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder, that the Romans — " 

At the mention of this terrible people, their implacable ene- 
mies, every young gentleman fastened his gaze upon the 
Doctor, with an assumption of the deepest interest. One of the 
number, who happened to be drinking, and who caught the 



fiB. BLIMBEB'8 8G300L 371 

Doctor's eye glaring at him through the side of his tumbler, left 
off so hastily that he was convulsed for some moments, and in 
the sequel ruined Doctor Blimber's point. 

" It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder," said the Doctor, beginning 
again slowly, "that the Romans, in those gorgeous and profuse 
entertainments of which we read in the days of the Emperors, 
when luxury had attained a height unknown before or since, 
and when whole provinces were ravaged to supply the splendid 
means of one imperial banquet " 

Here the offender, who had been swelling and straining, and 
waiting in vain for a full stop, broke out violently. 

" Johnson," said Mr. Feeder in a low, reproachful voice, 
" take some water." 

The Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the water 
was brought, and then resumed : 

" And when, Mr. Feeder " 

But Mr. Feeder, who saw that Johnson must break out again, 
and who knew that the Doctor would never come to a period 
before the young gentlemen until he had finished all he meant 
to say, couldn't keep his eye off Johnson ; and thus was caught 
in the fact of not looking at the Doctor, who consequently 
stopped. 

" I beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Feeder, reddening. " I 
beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber." 

" And when," said the Doctor, raising his voice, " when, sir, 
as we read, and have no reason to doubt — incredible as it may 
appear to the vulgar of our time — the brother of Vitellius pre- 
pared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two thou- 
sand dishes " 

" Take some water, Johnson — dishes, sir," said Mr. Feeder. 
. " Of Various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes " 

" Or try a crust of bread," said Mr. Feeder. 

" And one dish," pursued Dr. Blimber, raising his voice 
still higher as he looked all round the table, " called, from its 
enormous dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among 
other costly ingredients, of the brains of pheasants " 



872 CHARLES DICKENS 

" Ow, ow, ow ! " (from Johnson). 

" Woodcocks " 

" Ow, ow, ow ! " 

" The sounds of the fish called scari 



" You'll burst some vessel in your head," said Mr. Feeder. 
" You had better let it come." 

" And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the Carpa- 
thian Sea," pursued the Doctor in his severest voice ; " when we 
read of costly entertainments such as these, and still remember 
that we have a Titus " 

" What would be your mother's feelings if you died of apo- 
plexy ? " said Mr. Feeder. 

" A Domitian " 

" And you're blue, you know," said Mr. Feeder. 

" A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabulus, and many 
more," pursued the Doctor ; " it is, Mr. Feeder — if you are doing 
me the honor to attend — remarkable ; very remarkable, sir " 

But Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, burst at that 
moment into such an overwhelming fit of coughing, that, 
although both his immediate neighbors thumped him on the 
back, and Mr. Feeder himself held a glass of water to his lips, 
and the butler walked him up and down several times between 
his own chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, it was full five 
minutes before he was moderately composed, and then there 
was a profound silence. 

" Gentlemen," said Doctor Blimber, " rise for Grace ! Corne- 
lia, lift Dombey down " — ^nothing of whom but his scalp was 
accordingly seen above the table-cloth. " Johnson will repeat 
to me to-morrow morning before breakfast, without book, and 
from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle of 
St. Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume our studies, Mr. 
Feeder, in half an hour." 

The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr. Feeder did 
likewise. During the half-hour, the young gentlemen, broken 
into pairs, loitered arm-in-arm up and down a small piece of 
ground behind the house, or endeavored to kindle a spark of 



DR. BLIMBER'S SCHOOL 373 

animation in the breast of Briggs. But nothing happened so 
vulgar as play. Punctually at the appointed time the gong 
was sounded, and the studies, under the joint auspices of Doctor 
Blimber and Mr. Feeder, were resumed. 

As the Olympic game of lounging up and down had been 
cut shorter than usual that day, on Johnson's account, they all 
went out for a walk before tea. Even Briggs (though he hadn't 
begun yet) partook of this dissipation ; in the enjoyment of 
which he looked over the cliff two or three times darkly. 
Doctor Blimber accompanied them ; and Paul had the honor of 
being taken in tow by the Doctor himself; a distinguished state 
of things, in which he looked very little and feeble. 

Tea was served in a style no less polite than the dinner ; and 
after tea, the young gentlemen, rising and bowing as before, 
withdrew to fetch up the unfinished tasks of that day, or to get 
up the already looming tasks of to-morrow. In the mean time 
Mr. Feeder withdrew to his own room; and Paul sat in a 
corner, wondering whether Florence was thinking of him, and 
what they were all about at Mrs. Pipchin's. 

Mr. Toots, who had been detained by an important letter 
from the Duke of Wellington, found Paul out after a time, and 
having looked at him for a long while, as before, inquired if he 
was fond of waistcoats. 

Paul said " Yes, sir." 

" So am I," said Toots. 

No word more spake Toots that night ; but he stood looking 
at Paul as if he liked him ; and as there was company in that, 
and Paul was not inclined to talk, it answered his purpose 
better than conversation. 

At eight o'clock or so, the gong sounded again for prayers in 
the dining-room, where the butler afterward presided over a 
side-table, on which bread and cheese and beer were spread for 
such young gentlemen as desired to partake of those refresh- 
ments. The ceremonies concluded by the Doctor's saying, 
" Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven to-morrow : " 
and then, for the first time, Paul saw Cornelia Blimber's eye, 



374 CHARLES DICKEN8 

and saw that it was upon him. When the Doctor had said 
these words, " Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven 
to-morrow," the pupils bowed again, and went to bed. 

In the confidence of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his 
head ached ready to split, and that he should wish himself 
dead if it wasn't for his mother, and a blackbird he had at 
home. Tozer didn't say much, but he sighed a good deal, and 
told Paul to look out, for his turn would come to-morrow. 
After uttering those prophetic words, he undressed himself 
moodily, and got into bed. Briggs was in his bed too, and 
Paul in his bed too, before the weak-eyed young man appeared 
to take away the candle, when he wished them good-night and 
pleasant dreams. But his benevolent wishes were in vain as 
far as Briggs and Tozer were concerned; for Paul, who lay 
awake for a long while, and often woke afterward, found that 
Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a nightmare ; and that 
Tozer, whose mind was affected in his sleep by similar causes, 
in a minor degl-ee, talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek 
and Latin — it was all one to Paul — which, in the silence of 
night, had an inexpressibly wicked and guilty effect. 

Paul had sunk into a sweet sleep, and dreamed that he was 
walking hand in hand with Florence through beautiful gar- 
dens, when they came to a large sunflower which suddenly 
expanded itself into a gong, and began to sound. Opening his 
eyes, he found that it was a dark, windy morning, with a 
drizzling rain ; and that the real gong was giving dreadful note 
of preparation down in the hall. 

So he got up directly, and found Briggs with hardly any 
eyes, for nightmare and grief had made his face puffy, putting 
his boots on; while Tozer stood shivering and rubbing his 
shoulders in a very bad humor. Poor Paul couldn't dress 
himself easily, not being used to it, and asked them if they 
would have the goodness to tie some strings for him ; but, as 
Briggs merely said " Bother ! " and Tozer, '"' Oh yes ! " he went 
down, when he was otherwise ready, to the next story, where he 
saw a pretty young woman in leather gloves, cleaning a stove. 



DB. BLIMBER'S SCHOOL 376 

The young woman seemed surprised at his appearance, and 
asked him where his mother was. When Paul told her she 
was dead, she took her gloves off, and did what he wanted ; and 
furthermore rubbed his hands to warm them ; and gave him 
a kiss ; and told him whenever he wanted anything of that 
sort — meaning in the dressing way — to ask for 'Melia '; which 
Paul, thanking her very much, said he certainly would. He 
then proceeded softly on his journey down-stairs, toward the 
room in which the young gentlemen resumed their studies, 
when, passing by a door that stood ajar, a voice from within 
cried, " Is that Dombey ? " On Paul replying, " Yes, ma'am ; " 
for he knew the voice to be Miss Blimber's : Miss Blimber said, 
" Come in, Dombey." And in he went. 

Miss Blimber presented exactly the appearance she had pre- 
sented yesterday, except that she wore a shawl. Her little 
light curls were as crisp as ever, and she had already her spec- 
tacles on, which made Paul wonder whether she went to bed in 
them. She had a cool little sitting-room of her own up there, 
with some books in it, and no fire. But Miss Blimber was 
never cold, and never sleepy. 

" Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, " I'm going out for a 
constitutional." 

Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't send the 
footman out to get it in such unfavorable weather. But he 
made no observation on the subject ; his attention being de- 
voted to a little pile of new books, on which Miss Blimber 
appeared to have been recently engaged. 

" These are yours, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. 

" All of 'em, ma'am ? " said Paul. 

" Yes," returned Miss Blimber ; " and Mr. Feeder will look 
you out some more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect 
you will be, Dombey." 

" Thank you, ma'am," said Paul. 

" I am going out for a constitutional," resumed Miss Blimber ; 
" and while I am gone, that is to say, in the interval between 
this and breakfast, Dombey, I wish you to read over what I 



376 CHARLE8 DICKENS 

have marked in these books, and to tell me if you quite under- 
stand what you have got to learn. Don't lose time, Dombey, 
for you have none to spare, but take them down-stairs, and 
begin directly." 

" Yes, ma'am," answered Paul. 

There were so many of them, that although Paul put one 
hand under the bottom book, and his other hand and his chin 
on the top book, and hugged them all closely, the middle book 
slipped out before he reached the door, and then they all 
tumbled down on the floor. Miss Blimber said, " Oh, Dombey, 
Dombey, this is really very careless ! " and piled them up afresh 
for him ; and this time, by dint of balancing them with great 
nicety, Paul got out of the room, and down a few stairs, before 
two of them escaped again. But he held the rest so tight, that 
he only left one more on the first floor, and one in the passage ; 
and when he had got the main body down into the school- 
room, he set off" upstairs again to collect the stragglers. 
Having at last amassed the whole library, and climbed into his 
place, he fell to work, encouraged by a remark from Tozer to 
the effect that he "was in for it now ; " which was the only 
interruption he received till breakfast-time. At that meal, for 
which he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn and 
genteel as at the others ; and when it was finished he followed 
Miss Blimber upstairs. 

" Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, " how have you got on 
with those books ? " 

They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin — names 
of things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises 
thereon, and preliminary rules — a trifle of orthography, a glance 
at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, 
two or three weights and measures, and a little general infor- 
mation. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he found 
he had no idea of number one ; fragments whereof afterward 
obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into 
number four, which grafted itself on to number two. So that 
- whether twenty E,omuluses made a Remus, or hie haec hoc was 



BR. BLIMBER'8 SCHOOL 377 

troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or 
three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with 
him. 

" Oh, Dombey, Dombey ! " said Miss Blimber, " this is very 
shocking." 

" If you please," said Paul, " I think, if I might sometimes 
talk a little to old Glubb, I should be able to do better." 

" Nonsense, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. " I couldn't hear 
of it. This is not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must 
take the books down, I suppose, Dombey, one by one, and per- 
fect yourself in the day's installment of subject A, before you 
turn at all to subject B. And now take away the top book, if 
you please, Dombey, and return when you are master of the 
theme." 

Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul's 
uninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expected 
this result, and were glad to find that they must be in constant 
communication. Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was 
told, and labored away at it down below : sometimes remem- 
bering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting it all, and 
everything else besides: until at last he ventured upstairs 
again to repeat the lesson, when it was nearly all driven out of 
his head before he began, by Miss Blimber's shutting up the 
book, and saying, " Go on, Dombey ! " a proceeding so sug- 
gestive of the knowledge inside of her, that Paul looked upon 
the young lady with consternation, as a kind of learned Guy 
Fawkes, or artificial Bogie, stuffed full of scholastic straw. 

He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless ; and Miss Bliin- 
ber, commending him as giving promise of getting on fast, 
immediately provided him with subject B; from which he 
passed to C, and even D before dinner. It was hard work, 
resuming his studies soon after dinner : and he felt giddy and 
confused, and drowsy and dull. But all the other young 
gentlemen had similar sensations, and were obliged to resume 
their studies too, if there were any comfort in that. It was 
a wonder that the great clock in the hall, instead of being 



878 CHARLES DICKENS 

constant to its first inquiry, never said, "Gentlemen, we will 
now resume our studies," for that phrase was often enough 
repeated in its neighborhood. The studies went round like a 
mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were always stretched 
upon it. 

After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for 
next day by candle-light. And in due course there was bed ; 
where, but for that resumption of the studies which took place 
in dreams, were rest and sweet forgetfulness. 

Oh, Saturdays ! Oh, happy Saturdays ! when Florence 
always came at noon, and never would, in any weather, stay 
away, though Mrs. Pipchin snarled and growled, and worried 
her bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at least two 
little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath 
work of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's 
love. 

Not even Sunday nights — the heavy Sunday nights, whose 
shadow darkened the first waking burst of light on Sunday 
mornings — could mar those precious Saturdays. Whether it 
was the great sea-shore, where they sat and strolled together ; 
or whether it was only Mrs. Pipchin's dull back room, in 
which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy head upon 
her arm ; Paul never cared. It was Florence. That was all he 
thought of So, on Sunday nights, when the Doctor's dark 
door stood agape to swallow him up for another week, the time 
was come for taking leave of Florence ; no one else. 

Mrs. Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, 
and Miss Nipper, now a smart young woman, had come down. 
To many a single combat with Mrs. Pipchin did Miss Nipper 
gallantly devote herself; and if ever Mrs. Pipchin in all her life 
had found her match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper 
threw away the scabbard the first morning she arose in Mrs. 
Pipchin's house. She asked and gave no quarter. She said it 
must be war, and war it was ; and Mrs. Pipchin lived from that 
time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and defiances ; and 
skirmishing attacks that came bouncing in upon her from the 



DR. BLIMBER'8 SCHOOL 379 

passage, even in unguarded moments of chops, and carried 
desolation to her very toast. 

Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night wdth Florence, 
from walking back with Paul to the Doctor's, when Florence 
took from her bosom a little piece of paper, on which she had 
penciled down some words. 

" See here, Susan," she said. " These are the names of the 
little books that Paul brings home to do those long exercises 
with, when he is so tired. I copied them last night while he 
was writing." 

" Don't show 'em to me. Miss Floy, if you please," returned 
Nipper ; " I'd as soon see Mrs. Pipchin." 

" I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, to- 
morrow morning. I have money enough," said Florence. 

" Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy," returned Miss 
Nipper, " how can you talk like that, wdien you have books 
upon books alread}^, and masterses and misses a teaching of you 
everything continual, though my belief is that your pa. Miss 
Dombey, never would have learnt you nothing, never would 
have thought of it, unless you'd asked him — when he couldn't 
well refuse ; but giving consent when asked, and offering when 
unasked, miss, is quite two things ; I may not have any objec- 
tions to a young man's keeping company with "me, and when 
he puts the question, may say " Yes," but that's not saying, 
' Would you be so kind as like me ? ' " 

" But you can buy me the books, Susan ; and you will, when 
you know I want them." 

" Well, miss, and why do you want 'em ? " replied Nipper ; 
adding, in a lower voice, " If it was to fling at Mrs. Pipchin's 
head, I'd buy a cart-load." 

" I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I 
had these books," said Florence, " and make the coming week a 
little easier to him. At least I want to try. So buy them for me, 
dear, and I will never forget how kind it was of you to do it ! " 

It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper's that 
could have rejected the little purse Florence held out with 



380 CHARLES DICKENS 

these words, or the gentle look of entreaty with which she sec- 
onded her petition. Susan put the purse in her pocket without 
reply, and trotted out at once upon her errand. 

The books were not easy to procure ; and the answer at 
several shoj)s was, either that they were just out of them, or 
that they never kept them, or that they had had a great many 
last month, or that they expected a great many next week. 
But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise ; and 
having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, 
from a library where she was known, to accompany her in her 
quest, she led him such a life in going up and down, that he 
exerted himself to the utmost, if it were only to get rid of her ; 
and finally enabled her to return home in triumph. 

With these treasures, then, after her own daily lessons were 
over, Florence sat down at night to track Paul's footsteps 
through the thorny ways of learning ; and being possessed of 
a naturally quick and sound capacity, and taught by that most 
wonderful of masters, love, it was not long before she gained 
upon Paul's heels, and caught and passed him. 

Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs. Pipchin ; but many 
a night when they were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with 
her hair in papers and herself asleep in some uncomfortable 
attitude, reposed unconscious by her side; and when the chink- 
ing ashes in the grate were cold and gray ; and when the candles 
were burnt down and guttering out ; Florence tried so hard to 
be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude and 
perseverance might have almost won her a free right to bear 
the name herself. 

And high was her reward, when one Saturday evening, as 
little Paul was sitting down as usual to " resume his studies," 
she sat down by his side, and showed him all that was so rough, 
made smooth, and all that was so dark, made clear and plain, 
before him. It was nothing but a startled look in Paul's wan 
face — a flush — a smile — and then a close embrace — but God 
knows how her heart leaped up at this rich payment for her 
trouble. 



DR. BLIMBER'S SCHOOL 381 

" Oh, Floy ! " cried her brother, " how I love you ! How I 
love you, Floy ! " 

" And I you, dear ! " 

" Oh ! I am sure of that, Floy ! " 

He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by 
her, very quiet ; and in the night he called out from his little 
room within hers, three or four times, that he loved her. 

Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with 
Paul on Saturday night, and patiently assist him through so 
much as they could anticipate together of his next week's work. 
The cheering thought that he was laboring on where Florence 
had just toiled before him would, of itself, have been a stimu- 
lant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of his studies ; but, 
coupled with the actual lightening of his load, consequent on 
this assistance, it saved him, possibly, from sinking underneath 
the burden which the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his 
back. 

It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, 
or that Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young 
gentlemen in general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which 
she had been bred; and the Doctor, in some partial confusion 
of his ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if they were 
all Doctors, and were born grown up. Comforted by the ap- 
plause of the young gentlemen's nearest relations, and urged on 
by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would have 
been strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, 
or trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack. 

Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he 
made great progress, and was naturally clever, Mr. Dombey 
was more bent than ever on his being forced and crammed. 
In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber reported that he 
did not make great progress yet, and was not naturally clever, 
Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, 
however high and ^false the temperature at which the Doctor 
kept his hot-house, the owners of the plants were always ready 
to lend a helping hand at the bellows, and to stir the fire. 



382 CHARLES mCKENS 

Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost, of course. 
But he retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful 
in his character ; and, under circumstances so favorable to the 
development of those tendencies, became even more strange, 
and old, and thoughtful than before. 

The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. 
He grew more thoughtful and reserved every day ; and had no 
such curiosity in any living member of the Doctor's household 
as he had had in Mrs. Pipchin. He loved to be alone ; and, in 
those short intervals when he was not occupied with his books, 
liked nothing so well as wandering about the house by himself, 
or sitting on the stairs, listening to the great clock in the hall. 
He was intimate with all the paper-hanging in the house ; saw 
things that no one else saw in the patterns ; found out miniature 
tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and squinting 
faces leering in the squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth. 

The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque 
work of his musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs. 
Blimber thought him " odd," and sometimes the servants said 
among themselves that little Dombey " moped ; " but that was 
all. 

Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the 
expression of which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like 
ghosts (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be 
spoken to a little before they will explain themselves ; and 
Toots had long left off asking any questions of his own mind. 
Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden cas- 
ket, his cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and form, 
would have become a genie ; but it could not ; and it only so 
far followed the example of the smoke in the Arabian story as 
to roll out in a thick cloud, and there hang and hover. But it 
left a little figure visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots was 
always staring at it. 

" How are you? " he would say to Paul fifty times a day. 

" Quite well, sir, thant you," Paul would answer. 

" Shake hands," would be Toots's next advance. 



DR. BLIMBER'8 SCHOOL 383 

Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr. Toots 
generally said again, after a long interval of staring and hard 
breathing, " How are you ? " To which Paul again replied, 
" Quite well, sir, thank you." 

One evening Mr. Toots was sitting at his desk, oppressed by 
correspondence, when a great purpose seemed to flash upon him. 
He laid down his pen, and went off to seek Paul, whom he 
found at last, after a long search, looking through the window 
of his little bedroom. 

" I say ! " cried Toots, speaking the moment he entered the 
room, lest he should forget it ; " what do you think about ? " 

" Oh ! I think about a great many things," replied Paul. 

" Do you, though ? " said Toots, appearing to consider that 
fact in itself surprising. 

" If you had to die — " said Paul, looking up into his face. 

Mr. Toots started, and seemed much disturbed. 

" — Don't you think you would rather die on a moonlight 
night, when the sky was quite clear, and the wind blowing, as 
it did last night ? " 

Mr. Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his 
head, that he didn't know about that. 

" Not blowing, at least," said Paul, '' but sounding in the air 
like the sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. 
When I had listened to the water for a long time, I got up and 
looked out. There was a boat over there, in the full light of 
the moon ; a boat with a sail." 

The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly 
that Mr. Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something 
about this boat, said, " Smugglers." But, with an impartial 
remembrance of there being two sides to every question, he 
added, '' or Preventive." 

" A boat with a sail," repeated Paul, " in the full light of the 
moon. The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the 
distance, and what do you think it seemed to do as it moved 
with the waves ? " 

" Pitch," said Mr. Toots. 



384 CHABLE8 DICKENS 

" It seemed to beckon," said the child, " to beckon me to 
come ! There she is ! There she is ! " 

Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden 
exclamation, after what had gone before, and cried, " Who ? " 

" My sister Florence ! " cried Paul, " looking up here, and 
waving her hand. She sees me — she sees me! Good-night, 
dear, good-night, good-night ! " 

His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he 
stood at his window, kissing and clapping his hands, and the 
way in which the light retreated from his features as she passed 
out of his view, and left a patient melancholy on the little face, 
were too remarkable wholly to escape even Toots's notice. Their 
interview being interrupted at this moment by a visit from 
Mrs. Pipchin, who usually brought her black skirts to bear 
upon Paul just before dusk, once or twice a week. Toots had no 
opportunity of improving the occasion : but it left so marked 
an impression on his mind, that he twice returned, after hav- 
ing exchanged the usual salutations, to ask Mrs. Pipchin how 
she did. This the irascible old lady conceived to be a deeply- 
devised and long-meditated insult, originating in the diabolical 
invention of the weak-eyed young man down-stairs, against 
whom she accordingly lodged a formal complaint with Doctor 
Blimber that very night ; who mentioned to the young man 
that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with 
him. 

The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window 
every evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and 
repassed at a certain time until she saw him ; and their mutual 
recognition was a gleam of sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often, 
after dark, one other figure walked alone before the Doctor's 
house. He rarely joined them on the Saturday now. He could 
not bear it. He would rather come unrecognized, and look up 
at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man ; and 
wait, and watch, and plan, and hope. 

Oh ! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight, 
spare boy above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight 



DB. BLIMBEB'S SCHOOL 385 

with his earnest eyes, and breasting the window of his solitary 
cage when birds flew by, as if he would have emulated them, 
and soared away ! 

When the Midsummer vacation approached, no indecent 
manifestations of joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young 
gentlemen assembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent 
expression as " breaking-up " would have been quite inapplica- 
ble to that polite establishment. The young gentlemen oozed 
away, semi-annually, to their own homes ; but they never broke 
up. They would have scorned the action. 

They were within two or three weeks of the holidays, when, 
one day, Cornelia Blimber called Paul into her room, and said, 
" Dombey, I am going to send home your analysis." 

" Thank you, ma'am," returned Paul. 

" You know what I mean, do you, Dombey? " inquired Miss 
Blimber, looking hard at him through the spectacles. 

" No, ma'am," said Paul. 

" Dombey, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, '' I begin to be afraid 
you are a sad boy. When you don't know the meaning of an 
expression, why don't you seek for information ? " 

" Mrs. Pipchin told me I wasn't to ask questions," returned 
Paul. 

" I must beg you not to mention Mrs. Pipchin to me on any 
account, Dombey," returned Miss Blimber. " I couldn't think 
of allowing it. The course of study here is very far removed 
from anything of that sort. A repetition of such allusions 
would make it necessary for me to request to hear without a 
mistake, before breakfast-time to-morrow morning, from Verbum 
'personate down to simillima cygno." 

" I didn't mean, ma'am — " began little Paul. 

" I must trouble you not to tell me that you didn't mean, 
if you please, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, who preserved an 
awful politeness in her admonitions. " That is a line of argu- 
ment I couldn't dream of permitting." 
s. M.— 25 



386 CHARLES DICKENS 

Paul felt it safest to say nothing at all, so he only looked at 
Miss Blimber's spectacles. Miss Blimber, having shaken her 
head at him gravely, referred to a paper lying before her. 

" ' Analysis of the character of P. Dombey.' If my recollec- 
tion serves me," said Miss Blimber, breaking off, " the word 
analysis, as opposed to synthesis, is thus defined by Walker : 
'The resolution of an object, whether of the senses or of the 
intellect, into its first elements.' As opposed to synthesis, you 
observe. Novo you know what analysis is, Dombey." 

Dombey didn't seem to be absolutely blinded by the light let 
in upon his intellect, but he made Miss Blimber a little bow. 

" 'Analysis,' " resumed Miss Blimber, casting her eye over 
the paper, '"of the character of P. Dombey. I find that the 
natural capacity of Dombey is extremely good : and that his 
general disposition to study may be stated in an equal ratio. 
Thus, taking eight as our standard and highest number, I find 
these qualities in Dombey stated at six three-fourths ! ' " 

Miss Blimber paused to see how Paul received this news. 
Being undecided whether six three-fourths meant six pounds 
fifteen, or sixpence three farthings, or six foot three, or three- 
quarters past six, or six somethings that he hadn't learnt yet, 
with three unknown something else's over, Paul rubbed his 
hands and looked straight at Miss Blimber. It happened to 
answer as well as anything else he could have done ; and Cor- 
nelia proceeded : 

" ' Violence two. Selfishness two. Inclination to low com- 
pany, as evinced in the case of a person named Glubb, origi- 
nally seven, but since reduced. Gentlemanly demeanor four, 
and improving with advancing years.' Now, what I particu- 
larly wish to call ^^our attention to, Dombey, is the general 
observation at the close of this analysis." 

Paul set himself to follow it with great care. 

" ' It may be generally observed of Dombey,' " said Miss 
Blimber, reading in a loud voice, and at every second word 
directing her spectacles toward the figure before her: '"that his 
abilities and inclinations are good, and that he has made as 



DB. BLIMBEU'S SCHOOL 387 

much progress as under the circumstances could have been 
expected. But it is to be lamented of this young gentleman 
that he is singular (what is usually termed old-fashioned) in his 
character and conduct, and that, without j^resenting anything 
in either which distinctly calls for reprobation, he is often very 
unlike other young gentlemen of his age and social position.' 
Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, laying' down the paper, 
" do you understand that ? " 

" I think I do, ma'am," said Paul. 

" This analysis, you see, Dombey," Miss Blimber continued, 
" is going to be sent home to your respected parent. It will 
naturally be very painful to him to find that you are singular 
in your character and conduct. It is naturally painful to us ; 
for we can't like you, you know, Dombey, as well as we could 
wish." 

She touched the child upon a tender point. He had secretly 
become more and more solicitous from day to day, as the time 
of his departure drew more near, that all the house should like 
him. For some hidden reason, very imperfectly understood by 
himself — if understood at all — he felt a gradually increasing 
impulse of affection toward almost everything and everybody 
in the place. He could not bear to think that they would be 
quite indifferent to him when he was gone. He wanted them 
to remember him kindly ; and he had made it his business 
even to conciliate a great, hoarse, shaggy dog, chained up at 
the back of the house, who had previously been the terror of 
his life, that even he might miss him when he was no longer 
there. 

Little thinking that in this he only showed again the differ- 
ence between himself and his compeers, poor tiny Paul set it 
forth to Miss Blimber as well as he could, and begged her, in 
despite of the official analysis, to have the goodness to try and 
like him. To Mrs. Blimber, who had joined them, he preferred 
the same petition ; and when that lady could not forbear, even 
in his presence, from giving utterance to her often-repeated 
opinion, that he was an odd child, Paul told her that he was 



388 CHARLES DICKENS 

sure she was quite right ; that he thought it must be his bones, 
but he didn't know ; and that he hoped she would overlook it, 
for he was fond of them all. 

" Not so fond," said Paul, with a mixture of timidity and 
perfect frankness, which was one of the most peculiar and most 
engaging qualities of the child, " not so fond as I am of Flor- 
ence, of course; that could never be. You couldn't expect 
that, could you, ma'am ? " 

" Oh ! the old-fashioned little soul ! " cried Mrs. Blimber in a 
whisper. 

" But I like everybody here very much," pursued Paul, " and 
I should grieve to go away, and think that any one was glad 
that I was gone, or didn't care." 

Mrs. Blimber was now quite sure that Paul was the oddest 
child in the world ; and when she told the Doctor what had 
passed, the Doctor did not controvert his wife's opinion. But 
he said, as he had said before, when Paul first came, that study 
would do much ; and he also said, as he had said on that oc- 
casion, " Bring him on, Cornelia ! Bring him on ! " 

Cornelia had always brought him on as vigorously as she 
could; and Paul had had a hard life of it. But, over and 
above the getting through his tasks, he had long had another 
purpose always present to him, and to which he still held fast. 
It was, to be a gentle, useful, quiet little fellow, always striving 
to secure the love and attachment of the rest ; and though he 
was yet often to be seen at his old post on the stairs, or watch- 
ing the waves and clouds from his solitary window, he was 
oftener found, too, among the other boys, modestly rendering 
them some little voluntary service. Thus it came to pass that, 
even among those rigid and absorbed young anchorites who 
mortified themselves beneath the roof of Doctor Blimber, Paul 
was an object of general interest ; a fragile little plaything that 
they all liked, and that no one would have thought of treating 
roughly. But he could not change his nature, or rewrite the 
analysis ; and so they all agreed that Dombey was old-fashioned. 



BR. BLIMBEE'8 SCHOOL 389 

Paul had never risen from his little bed. He lay there, listen- 
ing to the noises in the street, quite tranquilly; not caring 
much how the time went, but watching it and watching every- 
thing about him, with observing eyes. 

When the sunbeams struck into his room through the rust- 
ling blinds, and quivered on the opposite wall like golden water, 
he knew that evening was coming on, and that the sky was red 
and beautiful. As the reflection died away, and a gloom went 
creeping up the wall, he watched it deepen, deepen, deepen into 
night. Then he thought how the long streets were dotted with 
lamps, and how the peaceful stars were shining overhead. His 
fancy had a strange tendency to wander to the river, which he 
knew was flowing through the great city : and now he thought 
how black it was, and how deep it would look, reflecting the 
hosts of stars — and more than all, how steadily it rolled away 
to meet the sea. 

As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in the street be- 
came so rare that he could hear them coming, count them as 
they paused, and lose them in the hollow distance, he would lie 
and watch the many-colored ring about the candle, and wait 
patiently for day. His only trouble was, the swift and rapid 
river. He felt forced, sometimes, to try to stop it — to stem it 
with his childish hands — or choke its way with sand — and when 
he saw it coming on, resistless, he cried out. But a word from 
Florence, who was always at his side, restored him to himself; 
and leaning his poor head upon her breast, he told Floy of his 
dream, and smiled. 

When day began to dawn again, he watched for the sun ; and 
when its cheerful light began to sparkle in the room, he pictured 
to himself — pictured ! he saw — the high church tower rising up 
into the morning sky, the town reviving, waking, starting into 
life once more, the river glistening as it rolled (but rolling fast 
as ever), and the country bright with dew. Familiar sounds 
and cries came by degrees into the street below ; the servants in 
the house were roused and busy ; faces looked in at the door, 
and voices asked his attendants softly how he was. Paul 



390 CHATtLES DICKENS 

always answered for himself, "I am better. I am a great deal 
better, thank you ! Tell papa so ! " 

By little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day, the 
noise of carriages and carts, and people passing and re-passing ; 
and would fall asleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy 
sense again — the child could hardly tell whether this were in 
his sleeping or his waking moments — of that rushing river. 
"Why, will it never stop, Floy? " he would sometimes ask her. 
" It is bearing me away, I think ! " 

But Floy could always soothe and reassure him; and it was 
his daily delight to make her lay her head down on his pillow, 
and take some rest. 

" You are always watching me, Floy. Let me watch you, 
now ! " 

They would prop him up with cushions in a corner of his 
bed, and there he would recline the while she lay beside him, 
bending forward oftentimes to kiss her, and whispering to those 
who were near that she was tired, and how she had sat up so 
many nights beside him. 

Thus, the flush of the day, in its heat and light, would gradu- 
ally decline ; and again the golden water would be dancing on 
the wall. 

He was visited by as many as three grave doctors^ — they used 
to assemble down-stairs, and come up together — and the room 
was so quiet, and Paul was so observant of them (though he 
never asked of anybody what they said), that he even knew 
the difference in the sound of their watches. But his interest 
centered in Sir Parker Peps, who always took his seat on the 
side of the bed. For Paul had heard them say, long ago, that 
that gentleman had been with his mamma when she clasped 
Florence in her arms, and died. And he could not forget it, 
now. He liked him for it. He was not afraid. 

The people round him changed as unaccountably as -on that 
first night at Doctor Blimber's — except Florence; Florence 
never changed — and what had been Sir Parker Peps was now 
his father, sitting with his head upon his hand. Old Mrs. 



DR. BLIMBEE'S SCHOOL 391 

Pipchin, dozing in an easy-chair, often changed to Miss Tox, 
or his aunt ; and Paul was quite content to shut his eyes again, 
and see what happened next without emotion. But this figure 
with its head upon its hand returned so often, and remained 
so long, and sat so still and solemn, never speaking, never being 
spoken to, and rarely lifting up its face, that Paul began to 
wonder languidly if it were real ; and in the night-time saw it 
sitting there with fear. 

" Floy ! " he said. " What is that ? " 

"Where, dearest?" 

" There ! at the bottom of the bed." 

" There's nothing there, except papa ! " 

The figure lifted up its head, and rose, and coming to the bed- 
side, said : " My own boy ! Don't you know me ? " 

Paul looked it in the face, and thought, was this his father ? 
But the face, so altered to his thinking, thrilled while he gazed, 
as if it were in pain ; and before he could reach out both his 
hands to. take it between them, and draw it toward him, the 
figure turned away quickly from the little bed, and went out at 
the door. 

Paul looked at Florence with a fluttering heart, but he knew 
what she was going to say, and stopped her with his face against 
her lips. The next time he observed the figure sitting at the 
bottom of the bed, he called to it. 

" Don't be so sorry for me, dear papa ! Indeed, I am quite 
happy ! " 

His father coming, and bending down to him — which he did 
quickly, and without first pausing by the bedside — Paul held 
him round the neck, and repeated those words to him several 
times, and very earnestly ; and Paul never saw him in his room 
again at any time, whether it were day or night, but he called 
out, " Don't be so sorry for me ! Indeed, I am quite happy ! " 
This was the beginning of his always saying in the morning 
that he was a great deal better, and that they were to tell his 
father ao. 

How many times the golden water danced upon the wall \ 



392 CHARLES DICKENS 

how many nights the dark, dark river rolled toward the sea in 
spite of him ; Paul never counted, never sought to know. If 
their kindness, or his sense of it, could have increased, they 
were more kind, and he more grateful, every day ; but whether 
they were many days or few, appeared of little moment now to 
the gentle boy. 

One night he had been thinking of his mother, and her pic- 
ture in the drawing-room down-stairs, and had thought she 
must have loved sweet Florence better than his father did, to 
have held her in her arms when she felt that she was dying — 
for even he, her brother, who had such dear love for her, could 
have no greater wish than that. The train of thought sug- 
gested to him to inquire if he had ever seen his mother ; for he 
could not remember whether they had told him yes or no, the 
river running very fast, and confusing his mind. 

" Floy, did I ever see mamma ? " 

" No, darling : why ? " 

" Did I never see any kind face, like mamma's, looking at me 
when I was a baby, Floy ? " 

He asked incredulously, as if he had some vision of a face 
before him. 

''Oh yes, dear!" 

"Whose, Floy?" 

" Your old nurse's. Often." 

" And where is my old nurse ? " said Paul. " Is she dead 
too ? Floy, are we all dead, except you ? " 

There was a hurry in the room for an instant — longer, per- 
haps ; but it seemed no more — then all was still again ; and 
Florence, with her face quite colorless, but smiling, held his 
head upon her arm. Her arm trembled very much. 

" Show me that old nurse, Floy, if you please ! " 

" She is not here, darling. She shall come to-morrow." 

" Thank you, Floy ! " 

Paul closed his eyes with those words, and fell asleep. When 
he awoke the sun was high, and the broad day was clear and 
warm. He lay a little, looking at the windows, which were 



DB. BLIMBER'8 SCHOOL 393 

open, and the curtains, rustling in the air, and waving to and 
fro : then he said, " Floy, is it to-morrow ? Is she come ? " 

Some one seemed to go in quest of her. Perhaps it was 
Susan. Paul thought he heard her telling him, when he had 
closed his eyes again, that she would soon be back ; but he did 
not open them to see. She kept her word — perhaps she had 
never been away — but the next thing that happened was a 
noise of footsteps on the stairs, and then Paul woke — woke, 
mind and body— and sat upright in his bed. He saw them 
now about him. There was no gray mist before them, as there 
had been sometimes in the night. He knew them every one, 
and called them by their names. 

" And who is this ? Is this my old nurse ? " said the child, 
regarding with a radiant smile a figure coming in. 

Yes, 3^es. No other stranger would have shed those tears at 
sight of him, and called him her dear boy, her pretty boy, her 
own poor blighted child. No other woman would have stooped 
down by his bed, and taken up his wasted hand, and put it to 
her lips and breast, as one who had some right to fondle it. 
No other woman would have so forgotten everybody there but 
him and Floy, and been so full of tenderness and pity. 

" Floy ! this is a kind, good face ! " said Paul. "I am glad to 
see it again. Don't go away, old nurse ! Stay here ! " 

His senses were all quickened, and he heard a name he 
knew. 

"Who was that who said 'Walter'?" he asked, looking 
round. " Some one said 'Walter.' Is he here? I should like 
to see him very much." 

Nobody replied directly ; but his father soon said to Susan, 
"Call him back, then : let him come up ! " After a short pause 
of expectation, during which he looked with smiling interest 
and wonder on his nurse, and saw that she had not forgotten 
Floy, Walter was brought into the room. His open face and 
manner, and his cheerful eyes, had always made him a favorite 
with Paul ; and when Paul saw him, he stretched out his hand, 
and said, " Good-by ! " 



894 CHARLES DICKENS 

" Good-by, my child ! " cried Mrs. Pipchin, hurrying to his 
bed's head. " Not good-by ? " 

For an instant Paul looked at her with the wistful face with 
which he had so often gazed upon her in his corner by the fire. 
" Ah, yes," he said placidly, " good-by ! Walter dear, good- 
by ! " — turning his head to where he stood, and putting out his 
hand again. " Where is papa ? " 

He felt his father's breath upon his cheek before the words 
had parted from his lips. 

" Remember Walter, dear papa," he whispered, looking in his 
face. " Remember Walter. I was fond of Walter." The feeble 
hand waved in the air as if it cried " Good-by ! " to Walter once 
again. 

" Now lay me down," he said, " and, Floy, come close to me, 
and let me see you ! " 

Sister and brother wound their arms around each other, and 
the golden light came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked 
together. 

" How fast the river runs, between its green banks and the 
rushes, Floy ! But it's very near the sea. I hear the waves ! 
They always said so." 

Presently he told her that the motion of the boat upon the 
stream was lulling him to rest. How green the banks were 
now, how bright the flowers growing on them, and how tall the 
rushes ! Now the boat was out at sea, but gliding smoothly on. 
And now there was a shore before him. Who stood on the 
bank ? 

He put his hands together, as he had been used to do at his 
prayers. He did not remove his arms to do it ; but they saw 
him fold them so, behind her neck. 

" Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by the face ! But 
tell them that the print upon the stairs at school is not divine 
enough. The light about the head is shining on me as I go ! " 

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing 
else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion ! The fashion 



TEE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 395 

that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged 
until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is 
rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion — Death ! 

Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of 
Immortality ! And look upon us, angels of young children, 
with regards not quite estranged when the swift river bears us 
to the ocean ! 

The School at Salem House 

(From " David Copperfield") 

A short walk brought us — I mean the Master and me — to 
Salem House, which was inclosed within a high brick wall, and 
looked very dull. Over a door in this wall was a board with 
Salem House upon it; and through a grating in this door we 
were surveyed, when we rang the bell, by a surly face, which I 
found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with 
a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair 
cut close all round his head. 

" The new boy," said the Master. 

The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over — it didn't 
take long, for there was not much of me — and locked the gate 
behind us and took out the key. We were going up to the 
house, among some dark heavy trees, when he called after my 
conductor. 

" Hallo ! " 

We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little 
lodge, where he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand. 

"Here! The cobbler's been," he said, "since you've been 
out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can't mend 'em any more. He 
saj^s there ain't a bit of the original boot left, and he wonders 
you expect it." 

With these words he threw the boots toward Mr. Mell, who 
went back a few paces to pick them up, and looked at them 
(very disconsolately, I was afraid) as we went on together. I 
observed then, for the first time, that the boots he had on were 



396 CHARLES DICKENS 

a good deal the worse for wear, and that his stocking was just 
breaking out in one place, like a bud. 

Salem House was a square brick building with wings, of a 
bare and unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very 
quiet, that I said to Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out ; but 
he seemed surprised at my not knowing that it was holiday- 
time. That all the boys were at their several homes. That 
Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the sea-side with Mrs. 
and Miss Creakle. And that I was sent in holiday-time as a 
punishment for my misdoing. All of which he explained to 
me as we went along. 

I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the 
most forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. 
A long room, with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, 
and bristling all round with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps 
of old copy-books and exercises litter the dirty floor. Some 
silkworms' houses, made of the same materials, are scattered 
over the desks. Two miserable little white mi^e, left behind by 
their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made 
of pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red 
eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger 
than himself, makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping 
on his perch, two inches high, or dropping from it ; but neither 
sings nor chirps. There is a strange unwholesome smell upon 
the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, 
and rotten books. There could not well be more ink splashed 
about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and 
the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through 
the varying seasons of the year. 

Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots 
upstairs, I went softly to the upper end of the room, observing 
all this as I crept along. Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard 
placard, beautifully written, which was lying on the desk, and 
bore these words : " Take care of him. He hitesP 

I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a 
great dog underneath. But, though I looked all round with 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 397 

anxious eyes, I could see nothing of him. I was still engaged 
in peering about when Mr. Mell came back and asked me what 
T did up there. 

" I beg your pardon, sir," says I ; "if you please, I'm looking 
for the dog." 

" Dog ? " says he. " What dog ? " 

" Isn't it a dog, sir ? " ' 

"Isn't what a dog?" 

" That's to be taken care of, sir ; that bites ? " 

" No, Copperfield," says he, gravely, " that's not a dog. That's 
a boy. My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on 
your back.^ I am sorry to make such a beginning with you, 
but I must do it." 

With that he took me down, and tied the placard, which was 
neatly constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a knap- 
sack ; and wherever I went afterward, I had the consolation of 
carrying it. 

What I suffered from that placard nobody can imagine. 
Whether it was possible for people to see me or not, I always 
fancied that somebody was reading it. It was no relief to turn 
round and find nobody ; for wherever my back was, there I 
imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man with the 
wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority, and 
if he ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, 
he roared out from his lodge-door in a stupendous voice, " Hallo, 
you sir ! You Copperfield ! Show that badge conspicuous, or 
I'll report you." The playground was a bare graveled yard, 
open to all the back of the house and the offices ; and I knew 
that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and the baker 
read it ; that everybody, in a word, who came backward and 
forward to the house of a morning when I was ordered to walk 
there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit. I recollect 
that I positively began to have a dread of myself as a kind of 
wild bo}^ who did bite. 

' The boy had bitten the finger of his step-father, while being cruelly pun- 
ished by the latter. 



398 GHABLE8 DICKENS 

There was an old door in this playground, on-which the boys 
had a custom of carving their names. It was completely cov- 
ered with such inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the 
vacation and their coming back, I could not read a boy's name 
without inquiring in what tone and with what emphasis he 
would read, " Take care of him. He bites." There was one boy 
— a certain J. Steerforth — who cut his name very deep and very 
often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong voice, 
and afterward pull my hair. There was another boy, one 
Tommy Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of it, and 
pretend to be dreadfully frightened of me. There was a third, 
George Demple, who I fancied would sing it. I have looked, 
a little shrinking creature, at that door, until the owners of all 
the names — there were five-and-forty of them in the school 
then, Mr. Mell said — seemed to send me to Coventry by general 
acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, " Take care 
of him. He bites ! " 

It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. 
It was the same with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped 
at, on my way to, and when I was in, my own bed. I remem- 
ber dreaming night after night, of being with my mother as 
she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr. Peggotty's, or of 
traveling outside the stage coach, or of dining again with my 
unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these circumstances 
making people scream and stare, by the unhappy disclosure 
that I had nothing on but my little nightshirt and that 
placard. 

In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension 
of the re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable 
affliction ! I had long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell ; 
but I did them, there being no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, 
and got through them without disgrace. Before, and after 
them, I walked about — supervised, as I have mentioned, by the 
man with the wooden leg. How vividly I call to mind the 
damp about the house, the green cracked flagstone in the court, 
an old leaky water-butt, and the discolored trunks of some of the 



THE 8GH00L AT SALEM HOUSE 

grim trees, which seemed to have dripped more in the rain than 
other trees, and to have blown less in the sun ! At one we 
dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end of a long bare dining- 
room, full of deal-tables, and smelling of fat. Then, we had 
more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue tea- 
cup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or 
eight in the evening Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the 
schoolroom, worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writ- 
ing-paper, making out the bills (as I found) for last half-year. 
When he had put up his things for the night, he took out his 
flute, and blew at it, until I almost thought he would gradually 
blow his whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze 
away at the keys. 

I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting 
with my head upon my hand, listening to the doleful perform- 
ance of Mr. Mell, and conning to-morrow's lessons. I picture 
myself with my books shut up, still listening to the doleful 
performance of Mr. Mell, and listening through it to what it 
used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind on Yar 
mouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture my- 
self going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on 
my bedside crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I 
picture myself coming down-stairs in the morning, and looking 
through a long ghastly gash of a staircase window at the school- 
bell hanging on the top of an outhouse with a weather-cock 
above it, and dreading the time when it shall ring J. Steerforth 
and the rest to work. Such time is only second, in my fore- 
boding apprehensions, to the time when the man with the 
wooden leg shall unlock the rusty gate to give admission to 
the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot think I was a very dangerous 
character in any of these aspects, but in all of them I carried 
the same warning on my back. Mr. Mell never said much to 
me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose we were com- 
pany to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that 
he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clinch his 
fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable 



400 CHARLES DICKENS 

manner. Btit he had these peculiarities. At first they fright- 
ened me, though I soon got used to them. 



We led this life about a month, when the man with the 
wooden leg began to stump about with a mop and bucket of 
water, from which I inferred that preparations were making to 
receive Mr. Creakle and the boys. I was not mistaken, for the 
mop came into the schoolroom before long, and turned out Mr. 
Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got on how we 
could, for some days, during which we were always in the way 
of two or three young women, who had rarely shown them- 
selves before, and were so continually in the midst of dust that 
I sneezed almost as much as if Salem House had been a great 
snuff-box. 

One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would 
be home that evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that 
he was come. Before bed-time I was fetched by the man with 
ths wooden leg to appear before him. 

Mr. Creakle's part of the house was a good deal more com- 
fortable than ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked 
pleasant after the dusty playground, which was such a desert 
in miniature that I thought no one but a camel or a dromedary 
could have felt at home in it. It seemed to me a bold thing 
even to take notice that the passage looked comfortable, as I 
went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle's presence, which so 
abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw Mrs. 
Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlor), or 
anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman, with a bunch of 
watch-chain and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and 
bottle beside him. 

" So ! " said Mr. Creakle. " This is the young gentleman 
whose teeth are to be filed ! Turn him round." 

The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit 
the placard ; and having afforded time for a full survey of if, 
turned me about again, with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted 
himself at Mr. Creakle's side. Mr. Creakle's face was fiery, and 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 401 

his eyes were small and deep in his head ; he had thick veins in 
his forehead, a little nose, and a large chin. He was bald on 
the top of his head, and had some thin wet-looking hair, that 
was just turning gray, brushed across each temple, so that the 
two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance 
about him which impressed me most, was that he had no voice, 
but spoke in a whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the 
consciousness of talking in that feeble way, made his angry 
face so much more angry, and his thick veins so much thicker, 
when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on looking back, at 
this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. 

" Now," said Mr. Creakle, " what's the report of this boy ? " 

" There's nothing against him yet," returned the man with 
the wooden leg. " There has been no opportunity." 

I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought that 
Mrs. Creakle and Miss Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the 
first time, and who were, both, thin and quiet) were not disap- 
pointed. 

" Come here, sir ! " said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me. 

" Come here ! " said the man with the wooden leg, repeating 
the gesture. 

" I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law," whis- 
pered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear ; " and a worthy man 
he is, and a man of a strong character. He knows me, and 
I know him. Do you know me ? Hey ? " said Mr. Creakle, 
pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness. 

" Not yet, sir," I said, flinching with the pain. 

"Not yet? Hey?" repeated Mr. Creakle. "But you will 
soon. Hey ? " 

" You will soon. Hey ? " repeated the man with the wooden 
leg. I afterward found that he generally acted, with his strong, 
voice, as Mr. Creakle's interpreter to the boys. 

I was very much frightened, and said I hoped so, if he 
pleased. I felt, all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he 
pinched it so hard. 

" I'll tell you what I am," whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go 

8. M.— 36 



402 0HARLE8 DICKEm 

at last, with a screw at parting that brought the water into my 
eyes. " I'm a Tartar." 

" A Tartar/' said the man with the wooden leg. 

" When I say I'll do a thing, I do it," said Mr. Creakle ; 
" and when I say I will have a thing done, I will have it done." 

" Will have a thing done, I will have it done," repeated the 
man with the wooden leg. 

" I am a determined character," said Mr. Creakle. " That's 
what I am. I do my duty ; that's what I do. My flesh and 
blood," he looked at Mrs. Creakle as he said this, " when it rises 
against me, is not my flesh and blood. I discard it. Has that 
fellow," to the man with the wooden leg, " been here again ? " 

" No," was the answer. 

" No," said Mr. Creakle. " He knows better. He knows me. 
Let him keep away. I say let him keep away," said Mr. 
Creakle, striking his hand upon the table, and looking at Mrs. 
Creakle, " for he knows me. Now you have begun to know me, 
too, my young friend, and you may go. Take him away." 

I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss 
Creakle were both wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfort- 
able for them as I did for myself But I had a petition on my 
mind which concerned me so nearly, that I couldn't help say- 
ing, though I wondered at my own courage : 

" If you please, sir " 

Mr. Creakle whispered : " Hah ! What's this ? " and bent his 
eyes upon me, as if he would have burnt me up with them. 

" If you please, sir," I faltered, " if I might be allowed (I am 
very sorry, indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, 
before the boys came back." 

Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did 
it to frighten me, I don't know, but he made a burst out of his 
chair, before which I precipitately retreated, with9ut waiting 
for the escort of the man with the wooden leg, and never once 
stopped until I reached my own bedroom, where, finding I was 
not pursued, I went to bed, as it was time, and lay quaking, for 
a couple of hours. 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 403 

Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the 
first master, and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr, Mell took his 
meals with the boys, but Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. 
Creakle's table. He was a limp, delicate-looking gentleman, I 
thought, with a good deal of nose, and a way of carrying his 
head on one side, as if it were a little too heavy for him. His 
hair was very smooth and wavy ; but I was informed by the 
very first boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand 
one he said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday after- 
noon to get it curled. 

It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this 
piece of intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. He 
introduced himself by informing me that I should find his 
name on the right-hand corner of the gate, over the top bolt ; 
upon that I said " Traddles ? " to which he replied, " The same," 
and then he asked me for a full account of myself and family. 
- It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came back 
first. He enjoyed my placard so much, that he saved me from 
the embarrassment of either disclosure or concealment, by pre- 
senting me to every other boy who came back, great or small, 
immediately on his arrival, in this form of introduction, " Look 
here ! Here's a game ! " Happily, too, the greater part of the 
boys came back low spirited, and were not so boisterous at my 
expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly did dance 
about me like wild Indians, and the greater part could not 
resist the temptation of pretending that I was a dog, and 
patting and smoothing me, lest I should bite, and saying, " Lie 
down, sir ! " and calling me Towser. This was naturally con- 
fusing, among so many strangers, and cost me some tears, but 
on the whole, it was much better than I had anticipated. 

I was not considered as being formally received into the 
school, however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, 
who was reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-look- 
ing, and at least half a dozen years my senior, I was carried as 
before a magistrate. He inquired, under a shed in the play- 
ground, into the particulars of my punishment, and was pleased 



404 CHARLES DICKENS 

to express his opinion that it was a "jolly shame," for which I 
became bound to him ever afterward. 

" What money have you got, Copperfield? " he said, walking 
aside with me when he had disposed of my affair in these 
terms. 

I told him seven shillings. 

" You had better give it to me to take care of," he said, " At 
least you can if you like. You needn't if you don't like." 

I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and open- 
ing Peggotty's purse, turned it upside down into his hand. 

" Do you want to spend anything now ? " he asked me. 

" No, thank you," I replied. 

" You can, if you like, you know," said Steerforth. " Say the 
word." 

" No, thank you, sir," I repeated. 

" Perhaps you'd like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a 
bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom ? " said 
Steerforth. " You belong to my bedroom, I find." 

It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said. Yes, I 
should like that. 

" Very good," said Steerforth. " You'll be glad to spend 
another shilling or so, in almond cakes, I dare say ? " 

I said. Yes, I should like that, too. 

" And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruits, 
eh ? " said Steerforth. " I say, young Copperfield, you're 
going it! " 

I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my 
mind, too. 

" Well ! " said Steerforth, " We must make it stretch as far as 
we can ; that's all. I'll do the best in my power for you. I 
can go out when I like, and I'll smuggle the prog in." With 
these words he put the money in his pocket, and kindly told 
me not to make myself uneasy ; he would take care it should be 
all right. 

He was as good as his w^ord, if that were all right which I 
had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong — for I feared it 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 405 

was a waste of my mother's two half-crowns — though I had 
preserved the piece of paper they were wrapped in, which was a 
precious saving. When we went upstairs to bed, he produced 
the whole seven shillings' worth, and laid it out on my bed in 
the moonlight, saying : 

"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread 
you've got." 

I couldn't think of doing the honors of the feast, at my time 
of life, while he was by ; my hand shook at the very thought of 
it. I begged him to do me the favor of presiding; and my 
request being seconded by the other boys who were in that 
room, he acceded to it, and sat upon my pillow, handing round 
the viands — with perfect fairness, I must say — and dispensing 
the currant-wine in a little glass without a foot, which was his 
own property. As to me, I sat on his left hand, and the rest 
were grouped about us, on the nearest beds and on the floor. 

How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers ; 
or their talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather 
to say ; the moonlight falling a little way into the room, 
through the window, painting a pale window on the floor, and 
the greater part of us in shadow, except when Steerforth dipped 
a match into a phosphorus box, when he wanted to look for 
anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over us that was 
gone directly ! A certain mysterious feeling, consequent on the 
darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which 
everything was said, steals over me again, and I listen to all 
they tell me with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which 
makes me glad that they are all so near, and frightens me 
(though I feign to laugh) when Traddles pretends to see a 
ghost in the corner. 

I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belong- 
ing to it. I heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred his claim 
to being a Tartar without reason ; that he was the sternest and 
most severe of masters ; that he laid about him right and left 
every day of his life, charging in among the boys like a trooper, 
and slashing away unmercifully. That he knew nothing him- 



406 CHABLE8 DICKENS 

self, but the art of slashing, being more ignorant (J. Steerforth 
said) than the lowest boy in the school ; that he had been, a 
good many years ago, a small hop dealer in the Borough, and 
had taken to the schooling business after being bankrupt in 
hops, and making away with Mrs. Creakle's money. With a 
good deal more of that sort, which I wondered how they knew. 

I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was 
Tungay, was an obstinate barbarian who had formerly assisted 
in the hop business, but had come into the scholastic line with 
Mr. Creakle, in consequence, as was supposed among the boys, 
of his having broken his leg in Mr. Creakle's service, and hav- 
ing done a deal of dishonest work for him, and knowing his 
secrets. I heard that with the single exception of Mr. Creakle, 
Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys, 
as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was 
to be sour and malicious. I heard that Mr. Creakle had a son, 
who had not been Tungay's friend, and who, assisting in the 
school, had once held some remonstrance with his father on an 
occasion when its discipline was very cruelly exercised, and was 
supposed, besides, to have protested against his father's usage 
of his mother. I heard that Mr. Creakle had turned him out 
of doors in consequence, and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle had 
been in a sad way ever since. 

But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there 
being one boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay 
a hand, and that boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself 
confirmed this when it was stated, and said that he should like 
to begin to see him do it. On being asked by a mild boy (not 
me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see him do it, he 
dipped a match into his phosphorus box on purpose to shed a 
glare over his reply, and said he would commence by knocking 
him down with a blow on the forehead from his seven-and-six- 
penny ink bottle that was always on the mantelpiece. We sat 
in the dark for some time breathless. 

I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed to 
be wretchedly paid; and that when there was hot and cold 



TEE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 407 

meat for dinner at Mr. Creakle's table, Mr. Sharp was always 
expected to say he preferred cold ; which was again corrobo- 
rated by J. Steerforth, the only parlor-boarder. I heard that 
Mr. Sharp's wig didn't fit him; and that he needn't be so 
"bounceable" — somebody else said "bumptious" — about it, 
because his own red hair was very plainly to be seen behind. 

I heard that one boy, who was a coal merchant's son, came 
as a set-off against the coal bill, and was called on that account, 
" Exchange or Barter " — a name selected from the arithmetic- 
book, as expressing this arrangement. I heard that the table- 
beer was a robbery of parents, and the pudding an imposition. 
I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the school in general 
as being in love with Steerforth ; and I am sure, as I sat in the 
dark, thinking of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his easy 
manner, and his curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard 
that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn't a sixpence 
to bless himself with ; and that there was no doubt that old 
Mrs. Mell, his mother, was as poor as Job. I thought of my 
breakfast then, and what had sounded like " My Charlie ! " but 
I was, I am glad to remember, as mute as a mouse about it. 

The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted the 
banquet some time. The greater part of the guests had gone 
to bed as soon as the eating and drinking were over ; and we, 
who had remained whispering and listening, half undressed, at 
last betook ourselves to bed, too. 

" Good-night, young Copperfield," said Steerforth. " I'll take 
care of you." 

" You're very kind," I gratefully returned. " I am very 
much obliged to you." 

" You haven't got a sister, have you ? " said Steerforth, yawn- 
ing. 

" No," I answered. 

" That's a pity," said Steerforth. " If you had had one, I 
should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little bright- 
ej^ed sort of a girl. I should have liked to know her. Good- 
night, young Copperfield," 



408 CHARLES DICKENS 

" Good-night, sir," I replied. 

I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised 
myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moon- 
light, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining 
easily on his arm. He was a person of great power in my eyes; 
that was, of course, the reason of my mind running on him. 
No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in, the moonbeams. 
There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps in the garden 
that I dreamed of walking in all night. 

School began in earnest next day. A profound impression 
was made upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the 
schoolroom suddenly becoming hushed as death when Mr. 
Creakle entered after breakfast, and stood in the doorway look- 
ing round upon us like a giant in a story-book surveying his 
captives. 

Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle's elbow. He had no occasion, 
I thought, to cry out " Silence ! " so ferociously, for the boys 
were all struck speechless and motionless. 

Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this 
effect : 

" Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you're about 
in this new half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, 
for I come fresh up to the punishment. I won't flinch. It will 
be of no use you rubbing yourselves ; you won't rub the marks 
out, that I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy." 

When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had 
stumj^ed out again, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me 
that if I were famous for biting, he was famous for biting, too. 
He then showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought of 
that for a tooth ? Was it a sharp tooth, hey ? Was it a double 
tooth, hey ? Had it a deep prong, hey ? Did it bite, hey? Did 
it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it 
that made me writhe ; so I was very soon made free of Salem 
House (as Steerforth said), and was very soon in tears also. 

Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction, 
which only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 409 

boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar in- 
stances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the school- 
room. Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before 
the day's work began ; and how much of it had writhed and 
cried before the day's work was over, I am really afraid to 
recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate. 

I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed 
his profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in 
cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving 
appetite. I am confident that he couldn't resist a chubby boy, 
especially ; that there was a fascination in such a subject, which 
made him restless in his mind until he had scored and marked 
him for the day. I was chubby myself, and ought to know. I 
am sure when I think of the fellow now, my blood rises against 
him with the disinterested indignation I should feel if I could 
have known all about him without having ever been in his 
power ; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an 
incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the 
great trust he held than to be Lord High Admiral, or Com- 
mander-in-chief — in either of which capacities, it is probable, 
that he would have done infinitely less mischief. 

Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject 
we were to him ! What a launch in life I think it now, on 
looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts 
and pretensions ! 

Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye — humbly 
watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering book for another vic- 
tim whose hands have just been flattened by that identical 
ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket 
handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don't watch his eye in 
idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread 
desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my 
turn to suffer or somebody else's. A lane of small boys beyond 
me, with the same interest in his eye, watch it too. I think he 
knows it, though he pretends he don't. He makes dreadful 
mouths as he rules the ciphering book ; and now he throws his 



410 CHARLES DICKENS 

eye sideways down our lane, and we all droop over our books 
and tremble. A moment afterward we are again eying him. 
An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, ap- 
proaches at his command. The culprit falters, excuses, and 
professes a determination to do better to-morrow. Mr. Creakle 
cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it — miserable 
little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and 
our hearts sinking into our boots. 

Here I sit at the desk again on a drowsy summer afternoon. 
A buzz and a hum go up around me, as if the boys were so 
many blue bottles. A cloggy sensation of the luke-warm fat of 
meat is upon me (we dined an hour or two ago) and my head is 
as heavy as so much lead. I would give the world to go to 
sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at him like 
a young owl ; when sleep overpowers me for a minute, he still 
looms through my slumber, ruling those ciphering books, until 
he softly comes behind me and wakes me to plainer percep- 
tion of him with a red ridge across my back. 

Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated by 
him, though I can't see him. The window at a little distance 
from which I know he is having his dinner, stands for him, 
and I eye that instead. If he shows his face near it, mine 
assumes an imploring and submissive expression. If he looks 
out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) 
stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes contempla- 
tive. One day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the 
world) breaks that window accidentally with a ball. I shudder 
at this moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing it done, 
and feeling that the ball has bounded on to Mr. Creakle's sacred 
head. 

Poor Traddles ! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms 
and legs like German sausages or roly-poly puddings, he was 
the merriest and most miserable of all the boys. He was always 
being caned — I think he was caned every day that half-year, 
except one holiday Monday when he was only ruler'd on both 
hands — and was always going to write to his uncle about it, 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 411 

and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little 
while, he would cheer up somehow, begin to laugh again, and 
draw skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I 
used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in draw- 
ing skeletons ; and for some time looked upon him as a sort of 
hermit, who reminded himself of those symbols of mortality 
that caning couldn't last for ever. But I believe he only did 
it because they were easy, and didn't want any features. 

He was very honorable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn 
duty in the boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this 
on several occasions; and particularly once, when Steerforth 
laughed in church, and the Beadle thought it was Traddles, 
and took him out. I see him now going away in custody, de- 
spised by the congregation. He never said who was the real 
offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was impris- 
oned so many hours that he came forth with a whole church- 
yardful of skeletons swarming all over his Latin dictionary. 
But he had his reward. Steerforth said there was nothing of 
the sneak in Traddles, and we all felt that to be the highest 
praise. For my part, I could have gone through a good deal 
(though I was much less brave than Traddles, and nothing like 
so old) to have won such a recompense. 

To see Steerfortli walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with 
Miss Creak'le, was one of the great sights of my life. I didn't 
think Miss Creakle equal to little Em'ly in point of beauty, and 
I didn't love her (I didn't dare) ; but I thought her a young 
lady of extraordinary attractions, and in point of gentility not 
to be surpassed. When Steerforth, in white trousers, carried 
her parasol for her, I felt proud to know him ; and believed that 
she could not choose but adore him with all her heart. Mr. 
Sharp and Mr. Mell were both notable personages in my eyes; 
but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars. 

Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very 
useful friend, since nobody dared to annoy one whom he 
honored with his countenance. He couldn't — or at all events 
he didn't — defend me from Mr. Creakle, who was very severe 



412 CHARLES DICKENS 

with me ; but whenever I had been treated worse than usual, 
he always told me that I wanted a little of his pluck, and that 
he wouldn't have stood it himself ; which I felt lie intended for 
encouragement, and considered to be very kind of him. There 
was one advantage, and only one that I knew of, in Mr. 
Creakle's severity. He found my placard in his way when he 
came up or down behind the form on which I sat, and wanted 
to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason it was soon 
taken off, and I saw it no more. 

An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between 
Steerforth and me, in a manner that inspired me with great 
pride and satisfaction, though it sometimes led to inconveni- 
ence. It liappened on one occasion, when he was doing me the 
honor of talking to me in the playground, that I hazarded the 
observation that something or somebody — I forgot what now — 
was like something or somebody in " Peregrine Pickle." He 
said nothing at the time; but when I was going to bed at 
night, asked me if I had got that book? I told him no, and 
explained how it was that I had read it, and all those other 
books of which I have made mention. 

" And do you recollect them ? " Steerforth said. 

" Oh, yes ; " I replied, I had a good memory, and I believed I 
recollected them very well. 

" Then I tell you what, young Copperfield," said Steerforth, 
" you shall tell 'em to me. I can't get to sleep very early at 
night, and I generally wake rather early in the morning. 
We'll go over 'em one after another. We'll make some regular 
' Arabian Nights ' of it." 

I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we com- 
menced carrying it into execution that very evening. What 
ravages I committed on my favorite authors in the course of 
my interpretation of them, I am not in a condition to say, and 
should be very unwilling to know ; but I had a profound faith 
in them, and I had, to the best of my belief, a simple earnest 
manner of narrating what I did narrate ; and these qualities 
went a long way. 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 413 

The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or out of 
spirits and indisposed to resume the story, and then it was 
rather hard work, and it must be done ; for to disappoint or to 
displease Steerforth was, of course, out of the question. In the 
morning, too, when I felt weary, and should have enjoyed an- 
other hour's repose very much, it was a tiresome thing to be 
roused, like the Sultana Scheherazade, and forced into a long 
story before the getting-up bell rang ; but Steerforth was reso- 
lute ; and as he explained to me, in return, my sums and exer- 
cises, and anything in my tasks that was too hard for me, 
I was no loser by the transaction. Let me do myself justice, 
however. I was moved by no interest or selfish motive, nor 
was I moved by fear of him. I admired and loved him, and 
his approval was return enough. It was so precious to me, 
that I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart. 

Steerforth was considerate, too, and showed his consideration, 
in one particular instance in an unflinching manner, and was 
a little tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest. 
Peggotty's promised letter — what a comfortable letter it was! — 
arrived before " the half " was many weeks old, and with it a 
cake in a perfect nest of oranges, and two bottles of cowslip 
wine. This treasure, as in duty bound, I laid at the feet of 
Steerforth, and begged him to dispense. 

"Now, I tell you what, young Copperfield," said he: "the 
wine shall be kept to wet your whistle when you are story- 
telling." 

I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to 
think of it. But he said he had observed I was sometimes 
hoarse — a little roopy was his exact expression — and it should 
be, every drop, devoted to the purpose he had mentioned. 
Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and drawn off by 
himself in a vial, and administered to me through a piece of 
quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of a 
restorative. Sometimes to make it a more sovereign specific, 
he was so kind as to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir 
it up with ginger, or dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and 



414 GHABLE8 DIOKWNS 

although I cannot assert that the flavor was improved by these 
experiments, or that it was exactly the compound one would 
have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at night and the 
first thing in the morning, I drank it gratefully, and was very 
sensible of his attention. 

We seem to me to have been months over " Peregrine," and 
months more over the other stories. The institution never 
flagged for want of a story, I am certain, and the wine lasted 
out almost as well as the matter. Poor Traddles — I never 
think of that boy but with a strange disposition to laugh, and 
with tears in my eyes — was a sort of chorus, in general, and 
affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to 
be overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarm- 
ing character to the narrative. This rather put me out very 
often. It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he 
couldn't keep his teeth from chattering whenever mention was 
made of an Alguazil in connection with the adventures of Gil 
Bias ; and I remember that when Gil Bias met the captain of 
the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such 
an ague of terror that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who 
was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for 
disorderly conduct in the bedroom. 

Whatever I had within me that was romantic and dreamy, 
was encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark ; and in 
that respect the pursuit may not have been very profitable to 
me. But the being cherished as a kind of plaything in my 
room, and the consciousness that this accomplishment of mine 
was bruited about among the boys, and attracted a good deal 
of notice to me, though I was the youngest there, stimulated 
me to exertion. In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, 
whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely 
to be much learned. I believe our boys were, generally, as 
ignorant a set as any schoolboys in existence; they were too 
much troubled and knocked about to learn ; they could no more 
do that to advantage than any one can do anything to ad- 
vantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment, and worry. 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 415 

But my little vanity, and Steerforth's help, urged me on some- 
how ; and without saving me from much, if anything, in the 
way of punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an 
exception to the general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick 
up some crumbs of knowledge. 

In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a liking 
for me that I am grateful to remember. It always gave me pain 
to observe that Steerforth treated him with systematic disparage- 
ment, and seldom lost an occasion of wounding his feelings, or 
inducing others to do so. This troubled me the more for a long 
time, because I had soon told Steerforth, from whom I could no 
more keep such a secret than I could keep a cake or any other 
tangible possession, about the two old women Mr. Mell had 
taken me to see ; and I was always afraid that Steerforth would 
let it out, and twit him with it. 

We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my 
breakfast that first morning, and went to sleep under the 
shadow of the peacock's feathers to the sound of the flute, what 
consequences would come of the introduction into those alms- 
houses of my insignificant person. But the visit had its unfore- 
seen consequences ; and of a serious sort, too, in their way. 

One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indisposition, 
which naturally diffused a lively joy through the school, there 
was a good deal of noise in the course of the morning's work. 
The great relief and satisfaction experienced by the boys made 
them difficult to manage; and though the dreaded Tungay 
brought his wooden leg in twice or thrice, and took notes of the 
principal offenders' names, no great impression was made by 
it, as they were pretty sure of getting into trouble to-morrow, 
do what they would, and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy 
themselves to-day. 

It was, properly, a half holiday, being Saturday. But as the 
noise in the playground would have disturbed Mr. Creakle, and 
the weather was not favorable for going out walking, we were 
ordered into school in the afternoon, and set some lighter tasks 
than usual, which were made for the occasion. It was the day 



416 CHARLES DICKENS 

of the week on which Mr. Sharp went out to get his wig curled ; 
so Mr. Mell, who always did the drudgery, whatever it was, kept 
school by himself. 

If I could associate the idea of a bull or a bear with any one 
so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him in connection with 
that afternoon when the uproar was at its height, as of one of 
those animals, baited by a thousand dogs. I recall him bend- 
ing his aching head, supported on his bony hand over the book 
on his desk, and wretchedly endeavoring to get on with his tire- 
some work amidst an uproar that might have made the Speaker 
of the House of Commons giddy. Boys started in and out of 
their places playing at puss-in-the-corner with other bo^^s ; there 
were laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, 
howling boys ; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled about 
him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back 
and before his eyes ; mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, 
his mother, everything belonging to him that they should have 
had consideration for. 

" Silence ! " cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, and striking 
his desk with the book. "AVhat does this mean? It's impos- 
sible to bear it. It's maddening. How can you do it to me, 
boys?" 

It was my book that he struck his desk with ; and as I stood 
beside him, following his eye as it glanced round the room, I 
saw the boys all stop, some suddenly surprised, some half afraid, 
and some sorry, perhaps. 

Steerforth's place was at the bottom of the school at the 
opposite end of the long room. He was lounging with his back 
against the wall, and his hands in his pockets, and looked at 
Mr. Mell with his mouth shut up as if he were whistling, when 
Mr. Mell looked at him. 

" Silence, Mr. Steerforth ! " said Mr. Mell. 

" Silence yourself," said Steerforth, turning red. " Whom 
are you talking to? " 

" Sit down," said Mr. Mell. 

*' Sit down yourself," said Steerforth, " and mind your business." 



TEE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 417 

There was a titter, and some applause ; but Mr. Mell was so 
white that silence immediately succeeded ; and one boy, who 
had darted out behind him to imitate his mother again, changed 
his mind, and pretended to want a pen mended. 

" If you think, Steerforth," said Mr. Mell, " that I am not ac- 
quainted with the power you can establish over any mind 
here " — he laid his hand, without considering what he did (as 
I supposed), upon my head — " or that I have not observed you, 
within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of 
outrage against me, you are mistaken." 

" I don't give myself the trouble of thinking at all about 
you," said Steerforth, coolly ; " so I'm not mistaken, as it hap- 
pens." 

" And when you make use of your position of favoritism here 
sir," pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling very much, " to 
insult a gentleman " 

" A what ? — where is he ? " said Steerforth, 

Here somebody cried out, " Shame, J. Steerforth ! Too 
bad ! " It was Traddles ; whom Mr. Mell instantly discomfited 
by bidding him hold his tongue. 

— " To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who 
never gave you the least offense, and the many reasons for not 
insulting whom you are old enough and wise enough to under- 
stand," said Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling more and more, 
" you commit a mean and base action. You can sit down or 
stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go on." 

" Young Copperfield," said Steerforth, coming forward up the 
room, "stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once for all. 
When you take the liberty of calling me mean or base, or any- 
thing of that sort, you are an impudent beggar. You are 
always a beggar, you know ; but when you do that, you are an 
impudent beggar." 

I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, or 
Mr. Mell was going to strike him, or there was any such inten- 
tion on either side. I saw a rigidity come upon the whole school 
as if they had been turned into stone, and found Mr. Creakle 
s. M.— 27 



418 CEARLE8 DICKENS 

in the midst of us, with Tungay at his side, and Mrs. and Miss 
Creakle looking on at the door as if they were frightened. Mr. 
Mell, witli his elbows on his desk and his face in his hands, 
sat, for some moments, quite still. 

" Mr. Mell," said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm ; and his 
whisper was so audible now, that Tungay felt it unnecessary to 
repeat his words; " you have not forgotten yourself, I hope?" 

" No, sir, no," returned the Master, showing his face and 
shaking his head, and rubbing his hands in great agitation. 
" No, sir, no. I have remembered myself, I — no, Mr. Creakle, I 
have not forgotten myself, I — I have remembered myself, sir. 
I — I — could wish you had remembered me a little sooner, Mr. 
Creakle. It — it — would have been more kind, sir, more just, 
sir. It would have saved me something, sir." 

Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on Tun- 
gay's shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, and sat 
upon the desk. After still looking hard at Mr. Mell from this 
throne, as he shook his head and rubbed his hands, and re- 
mained in the same state of agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to 
Steerforth, and said : 

" Now, sir, as he don't condescend to tell me, what is this ? " 

Steerforth evaded the question for a little while ; looking in 
scorn and anger on his opponent, and remaining silent. I 
could not help thinking even in that interval, I remember, 
what a noble fellow he was in appearance, and how homely 
and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him. 

" What did he mean by talking about favorites, then ? " said 
Steerforth, at length. 

" Favorites ! " repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins in his 
forehead swelling quickly. " Who talked about favorites ? " 

" He did," said Steerforth. 

" And pray what did you mean by that, sir ? " demanded Mr. 
Creakle, turning angrily on his assistant. 

" I meant, Mr. Creakle," he returned in a low voice, " as I 
said ; that no pupil had a right to avail himself of his position 
of favoritism to degrade me." 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 419 

" To degrade you ? " said Mr. Creakle. " My stars. But give 
me leave to ask you, Mr. What's-your-name ; " and here Mr. 
Creakle folded his arms, cane and all, upon his chest, and made 
such a knot of his brows that his little eyes were hardly visible 
below them ; " whether, when you talked about favorites, you 
showed proper respect to me ? To me, sir," said Mr. Creakle, 
darting his head at him suddenly, and drawing it back again, 
" the principal of this establishment, and your employer. " 

" It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit," said Mr. 
Mell. " I should not have done so, if I had been cool." 

Here Steerforth struck in. 

" Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, and 
then I called him a beggar. If I had been cool, perhaps I 
shouldn't have called him a beggar. But I did, and I am ready 
to take the consequences of it." 

Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any conse- 
quences to be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gallant speech. 
It made an impression on the boys, too, for there was a low stir 
among them, though no one spoke a word. 

" I am surprised, Steerforth — although your candor does you 
honor, certainly — I am surprised, Steerforth, I must say, that 
you should attach such an epithet to any person employed and 
paid in Salem House, sir." 

Steerforth gave a short laugh. 

" That's not an answer, sir," said Mr. Creakle, " to my remark. 
I expect more than that from you, Steerforth." 

If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the handsome 
boy, it would be quite impossible to say how homely Mr. 
Creakle looked. 

" Let him deny it," said Steerforth. 

" Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth ! " cried Mr. Creakle. 
" Why, where does he go a-begging? " 

" If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation's one," said 
Steerforth. " It's all the same." 

He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell's hand gently patted me 
upon the shoulder. I looked up with a flush upon my face 



420 CHARLES DICKENS 

and remorse in my heart, but Mr. Mell's eyes were fixed on 
Steerforth. He continued to pat me kindly on the shoulder, 
but he looked at him. 

" Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself," said 
Steerforth, " and to say what I mean — what I have to say is, 
that his mother lives on charity in an almshouse." 

Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly on 
the shoulder and said to himself in a whisper, if I heard right, 
" Yes, I thought so." 

Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown and 
labored politeness : 

" Now you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell. Have 
the goodness, if you please, to set him right before the assembled 
school." 

" He is right, sir, without correction," returned Mr. Mell, in 
the midst of a dead silence ; " what he has said is true." 

" Be so good, then, as to declare publicly, will you," said Mr. 
Creakle, putting his head on one side, and rolling his eyes 
round the school, " whether it ever came to my knowledge until 
this moment ? " 

" I believe not directly," he returned. 

" Why, you know not," said Mr. Creakle. " Don't you, 
man ? " 

" I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circumstances 
to be very good," replied the assistant. " You know what my 
position is, and always has been here." 

" I apprehend, if you come to that," said Mr. Creakle, with 
his veins swelling again bigger than ever, " that you've been 
in a wrong position altogether, and mistook this for a charity 
school. Mr. Mell, we'll part, if you please. The sooner the 
better." 

" There is no time," answered Mr. Mell, rising, " like the 
present." 

" Sir, to you ! " said Mr. Creakle. 

" I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you," said 
Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me 



THE SCHOOL AT SALEM HOUSE 421 

gently on the shoulder. " James Steerforth, the best wish I 
can leave you is that you may come to be ashamed of what 
you have done to-day. At present I would prefer to see you 
anything rather than a friend, to me, or to any one in whom I 
feel an interest." 

Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and, then 
taking his flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving 
the key in it for his successor, he went out of the school, with 
his property under his arm. Mr. Creakle then made a speech, 
through Tungay, in which he thanked Steerforth for asserting 
(though perhaps too warmly) the independence and respectabil- 
ity of Salem House ; and which he wound up by shaking hands 
with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers — I did not quite 
know what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, and so joined in 
them ardently, though I felt miserable. Mr. Creakle then caned 
Tommy Traddles for being discovered in tears, instead of cheers, 
on account of Mr. Mell's departure ; and went back to his sofa, 
or his bed, or wherever he had come from. 

We were all left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I 
recollect, on one another. For myself, I felt so much self-re- 
proach and contrition for my part in what had happened, that 
nothing would have enabled me to keep back my tears but the 
fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, might think 
it unfriendly — or, I should rather say, considering our relative 
ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful — 
if I showed the emotion which distressed me. He was very 
angry with Traddles, and said he was glad he had caught it. 

Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his 
head upon the desk, and was relieving himself as usual with 
a burst of skeletons, said he didn't care. Mr. Mell was ill-used. 

" Who has ill-used him, you girl ? " said Steerforth. 

" Why, you have," returned Traddles. 

" What have I done ? " said Steerforth. 

" What have you done ? " retorted Traddles. " Hurt his feel- 
ings and lost him his situation." 

" His feelings ! " repeated Steerforth disdainfully. " His feel- 



422 CHABLE8 DICKENS 

ings will soon get the better of it, I'll be bound. His feelings 
are not like yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation — which 
was a precious one, wasn't it ? — do you suppose I am not going 
to write home, and take care that he gets some money, 
Polly?" 

We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose 
mother was a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, 
it was said, that he asked her. We were all extremely glad 
to see Traddles so put down, and exalted Steerforth to the 
skies; especially when he told us, as he condescended to do, 
that what he had done had been done expressly for us, and for 
our cause, and that he had conferred a great boon upon us by 
unselfishly doing it. 

But I must say that when I was going on with a story in the 
dark that night, Mr. Mell's old flute seemed more than once to 
sound mournfully in my ears ; and that when at last Steerforth 
was tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so 
sorrowfully somewhere that I was quite wretched. 

I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in 
an easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me 
to know everything by heart), took some of his classes until a 
new master was found. The new master came from a grammar 
school, and before he entered on his duties, dined in the parlor 
one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth approved of 
him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly 
understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I 
respected him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his 
superior knowledge ; though he never took the pains with me 
— not that I was anybody — that Mr. Mell had taken. 

Dr. Strong's School 

(From "David Copperfield ") 

Doctor Strong's was an excellent school ; as different from 
Mr. Creakle's as good is from evil. It was very gravely and 
decorously ordered, and on a sound system ; with an appeal 



DB. STRONG'S SCHOOL 423 

in everything to the honor and good faith of the boys, and an 
avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities 
unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked 
wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of 
the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, 
we soon became warmly attached to it — I am sure I did, for 
one, and I never knew, in all my time, of any other boy being 
otherwise — and learned with a good will, desiring to do it 
credit. We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of 
liberty ; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of 
in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or 
manner, to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong's 
boys. 

Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor's house, 
and through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars 
of the Doctor's history. As how he had not yet been married 
twelve months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the 
study, whom he had married for love ; for she had not a six- 
pence, and had a world of poor relations (so our fellows said) 
ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and home. Also, how 
the Doctor's cogitating manner was attributable to his being 
always engaged in looking out for Greek roots, which, in my 
innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor on 
the Doctor's part, especially as he always looked at the ground 
when he walked about until I understood that they were roots 
of words, with a view to a new Dictionary which he had in 
contemplation. Adams, our head boy, who had a turn for 
mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the 
time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor's 
plan, and at the Doctor's rate of going. He considered that it 
might be done in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine 
years, counting from the Doctor's last, or sixty-second birthday. 

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school, and 
it must have been a badly composed school if he had been any- 
thing else, for he was the kindest of men, with a simple faith in 
him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns 



424 CHARLES DICKENS 

upon the wall. As he walked up and down that part of the 
court-yard which was at the side of the house, with the stray- 
rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads cocked 
slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in 
worldly affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get 
near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his attention to 
one sentence of a tale of distress, that vagabond was made for 
the next two days. It was so notorious in the house that the 
masters and head boys took pains to cut these marauders off at 
angles, and to get out of windows and turn them out of the 
court-yard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their 
presence, which was sometimes happily effected within a few 
yards of him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as 
he jogged to and fro. Outside of his own domain, and unpro- 
tected, he was a very sheep for the shearers. He would have 
taken his gaiters off his legs to give away. 

In fact, there was a story current among us (I have no idea, and 
never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so many 
years that I feel quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one 
winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-wo- 
man, who occasioned some scandal in the neighborhood by ex- 
hibiting a fine infant from door to door, wrapped in those gar- 
ments, which were universally recognized, being as well known 
in the vicinity as the Cathedral. The legend added that the only 
person who did not identify them was the Doctor himself, who, 
when they were shortly afterward displayed at the door of a 
little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such 
things were taken in exchange for gin, was niore than once 
observed to handle them approvingly, as if admiring some 
curious novelty in the pattern, and considering them an im- 
provement on his own. 

It was very pleasant to see the Doctor with his pretty young 
wife. He had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fond- 
ness for her, which seemed in itself to express a good man. I 
often saw them walking in the garden where the peaches were, 
and I sometimes had a nearer observation of them in the study 



DOTHEBOTS HALL ' 425 

or the parlor. She appeared to me to take great care of the 
Doctor, and to like him very much, though I never thought 
her vitally interested in the Dictionary ; some cumbrous frag- 
ments of which work the Doctor always carried in his pockets, 
and in the lining of his hat, and generally seemed to be 
expounding to her as they walked about. 

Dotheboys Hall 

(From " Nicholas Nickleby") 

" Are you cold, Nickleby ? " inquired Squeers, after they had 
traveled some distance in silence. 

" Rather, sir, I must say." 

"Well, I don't find fault with that," said Squeers; "it's a 
long journey this weather." 

" Is it much further to Dotheboys Hall, sir ? " asked Nicholas. 

" About three mile from here," replied Squeers. " But you 
needn't call it a Hall down here." 

Nicholas coughed, as if he would like to know why. 

" The fact is, it ain't a Hall," observed Squeers, dryly. 

" Oh, indeed ! " said Nicholas, whom this piece of intelligence 
much astonished. 

" No," replied Squeers. " We call it a Hall up in Londonj 
because it sounds better, but they don't know it by that name 
in these parts. A man may call his house an island if he 
likes ; there's no act of Parliament against that, I believe." 

" I believe not, sir," rejoined Nicholas. 

Squeers eyed his companion slyly, at the conclusion of this 
little dialogue, and finding that he had grown thoughtful and 
appeared in nowise disposed to volunteer any observations, con- 
tented himself with lashing the pony until they reached their 
journey's end. 

" Jump out," said Squeers. " Hallo there ! come and put 
this horse up. Be quick, will you ? " 

While the schoolmaster was uttering these and other impa- 
tient cries, Nicholas had time to observe that the school was a 



426 CHARLES DICKEITS 

long, cold-looking house, one story high, with a few straggling 
out-buildings behind, and a barn and stable adjoining. After 
the lapse of a minute or two, the noise of somebody unlocking 
the yard-gate was heard, and presently a tall lean boy, with a 
lantern in his hand, issued forth. 

" Is that you, Smike ? " cried Squeers. 

" Yes, sir," replied the boy. 

" Then why the devil didn't you come before ? " 

'' Please, sir, I fell asleep over the tire," answered Smike, with 
humility. 

" Fire ! what fire ? Where's there a fire ? " demanded the 
schoolmaster, sharply. 

" Only in the kitchen, sir," rejDlied the boy. " Missus said as 
I was sitting up, I might go in there for a warm." 

" Your Missus is a fool," retorted Squeers. " You'd have 
been a deuced deal more wakeful in the cold, I'll engage." 

By this time Mr. Squeers had dismounted ; and after order- 
ing the boy to see to the pony, and to take care that he hadn't 
any more corn that night, he told Nicholas to wait at the front 
door a minute while he went round and let him in. 

A host of unpleasant misgivings, which had been crowding 
upon Nicholas during the whole journey, thronged upon his 
mind with redoubled force when he was left alone. His great 
distance from home and the impossibility of reaching it, except 
on foot, should he feel ever so anxious to return, presented 
itself to him in the most alarming colors ; and as he looked up 
at the dreary house and dark windows, and upon the wild 
country round, covered with snow, he felt a depression of heart 
and spirit which he had never experienced before. 

A ride of two hundred and odd miles in severe weather is 
one of the best softeners of a hard bed that ingenuity can 
devise. Perhaps it is even a sweetener of dreams, for those 
which hovered over the rough couch of Nicholas, and whispered 
their airy nothings in his ear, were of an agreeable and happy 
kind. He was making his fortune very fast indeed, when the 



DOTHEBOTS HALL 427 

faint glimmer of an expiring candle shone before his eyes, and 
a voice he had no difficulty in recognizing as part and parcel 
of Mr. Squeers, admonished him that it was time to rise. 

" Past seven, Nickleby," said Mr. Squeers. 

"Has morning come already ?" asked Nicholas,sittingupinbed. 

" Ah ! that has it," replied Squeers, " and ready iced too. 
Now, Nickleby, come ! tumble up, will you ? " 

Nicholas needed no further admonition, but " tumbled up " at 
once, and proceeded to dress himsolf by the light of the taper 
which Mr. Squeers carried in his hand. 

" Here's ^ pretty go," said that gentleman ; " the pump's froze." 

" Indeed ! " said Nicholas, not much interested in the intelli- 
gence. 

" Yes," replied Squeers. " You can't wash yourself this 
morning." 

" Not wash myself ! " exclaimed Nicholas. 

" No, not a bit of it, " rejoined Squeers, tartly. " So you must 
be content with giving yourself a dry polish till we break the 
ice in the well, and can get a bucketful out for the boys. Don't 
stand staring at me, but do look sharp, will you ? " 

Offering no further observation, Nicholas huddled on his 
clothes. Squeers, meanwhile, opened the shutters and blew the 
candle out ; when the voice of his amiable consort was heard in 
the passage, demanding admittance. 

" Come in, my love," said Squeers. 

Mrs. Squeers came in, still habited in the primitive night- 
jacket which had displayed the symmetry of her figure on the 
previous night, and further ornamented with a beaver bonnet 
of some antiquity, which she wore, with much ease and light- 
ness, on the top of the nightcap before mentioned. 

" Drat the things," said the lady, opening the cupboard : " I 
can't find the school-spoon anywhere." 

. " Never mind it, my dear," observed Squeers, in a soothing 
manner ; " it's of no consequence." 

" No consequence, why, how you talk ! " retorted Mrs. 
Squeers, sharply ; " isn't it brimstone morning ? " 



428 CHARLES DICKENS 

" I forgot, my dear," rejoined Squeers ; '' yes, it certainly is. 
We purify the boys' blood now and then, Nickleby." 

" Purify fiddlesticks' ends," said his lady. " Don't think, 
young man, that we go to the expense of flower of brimstone 
and molasses, just to purify them ; because if you think we 
carry on the business in that way, you'll find yourself mistaken, 
and so I tell you plainly." 

" My dear," said Squeers, frowning. " Hem I " 

" Oh ! nonsense," rejoined Mrs. Squeers. '' If the young man 
comes to be a teacher here, let him understand at once that we 
don't want any foolery about the boys. They have the brim- 
stone and treacle, partly because if they hadn't something or 
other in the way of medicine they'd be always ailing and giving 
a world of trouble, and partly because it spoils their appetites 
and comes cheaper than breakfast and dinner. So it does them 
good and us good at the same time, and that's fair enough, I'm 
sure." 

Having given this explanation, Mrs. Squeers put her hand 
into the closet and instituted a stricter search after the spoon in 
which Mr. Squeers assisted. A few words passed between them 
while they were thus engaged, but as their voices were partially 
stifled by the cupboard, all that Nicholas could distinguish was 
that Mr. Squeers said what Mrs. Squeers had said was inju- 
dicious, and that Mrs. Squeers said what Mr. Squeers said was 
" stuff." 

A vast deal of searching and rummaging ensued, and it 
proving fruitless, Smike was called in, and pushed by Mrs. 
Squeers, and boxed by Mr. Squeers ; which course of treatment 
brightening his intellects, enabled hini to suggest that possibly 
Mrs. Squeers might have the spoon in her pocket, as indeed 
turned out to be the case. As Mrs. Squeers had previously 
protested, however, that she was quite certain she had not got 
it, Smike received another box on the ear for presuming to con- 
tradict his mistress, together with a promise of a sound thrash- 
ing if he were not more respectful in future ; so that he took 
nothing very advantageous by his motion. 



BOTHEBOYS HALL 429 

" A most invaluable woman, that, Nickleby," said Squeers, 
when his consort had hurried away, pushing the drudge before 
her. 

" Indeed, sir ! " observed Nicholas. 

" I don't know her equal," said Squeers ; " I do not know her 
equal. That woman, Nickleby, is always the same — always 
the same bustling, lively, active, saving creetur that you see 
her now." 

Nicholas sighed involuntarily at the thought of the agree- 
able domestic prospect thus opened to him ; but Squeers was, 
fortunately, too much occupied with his own reflections to per- 
ceive it. 

" It's my way to say, when I am up in London," continued 
Squeers, " that to them boys she is a mother. But she is more 
than a mother to them : ten times more. She does things for 
them boys, Nickleb}^, that I don't believe half the mothers 
going would do for their own sons." 

" I should think they would not, sir," answered Nicholas. 

Now, the fact was, that both Mr. " and Mrs. Squeers viewed 
the boys in the light of their proper and natural enemies ; or, 
in other words, they held and considered that their business 
and profession was to get as much from every boy as could by 
possibility be screwed out of him. On this point they were 
both agreed, and behaved in unison accordingly. The only 
difference between them was, that Mrs. Squeers waged war 
against the enemy openly and fearlessly, and that Squeers cov- 
ered his rascality, even at home, with a spice of his habitual 
deceit ; as if he really had a notion of some day or other being 
able to take himself in, and persuade his own mind that he 
was a very good fellow. 

" But come," said Squeers, interrupting the progress of some 
thoughts to this effect in the mind of his usher, " let's go into 
the schoolroom ; and lend me a hand with my school-coat, 
will you ? " 

Nicholas assisted his master to put on an old fustian shoot- 
ing-jacket, which he took down from a peg in the passage ; and 



4S0 CEAnLES DtCKENB 

Squeers, arming himself with his cane, led the way across a 
yard, to a door in the rear of the house. 

" There," said the schoolmaster, as they stepped in together, 
"this is our shop, Nickleby! " 

It was such a crowded scene, and there were so many objects 
to attract attention, that at first Nicholas stared about him, 
really without seeing anything at all. By degrees, however, 
the place resolved itself into a bare and dirty room, with a 
couple of windows, whereof a tenth part might be of glass, the 
remainder being stopped up with old copybooks and paper. 
There were a couple of long old rickety desks, cut and notched, 
and inked, and damaged in every possible way ; two or three 
forms ; a detached desk for Squeers, and another for his 
assistant. The ceiling was supported, like that of a barn, by 
cross-beams and rafters ; and the walls were so stained and dis- 
colored, that it was impossible to tell whether they had ever 
been touched with paint or whitewash. 

But the pupils — the young noblemen ! How the last faint 
traces of hope, the remotest ghmmering of any good to be de- 
rived from his efforts in this den, faded from the mind of Nicho- 
las as he looked in dismay around ! Pale and haggard faces, 
lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old 
men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted 
growth, and others whose long meager legs would hardly bear 
their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together ; there 
were the bleared eye, the hare lip, the crooked foot, and every 
ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived 
by parents for their offspring, or of. young lives which, from 
the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance 
of cruelty and neglect. There were little faces which should 
have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged 
suffering ; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, 
its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining; there were 
vicious-faced boys, brooding, with leaden eyes, like malefactors 
in a jail ; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of 
their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the merce- 



DOTBEBOYS HALL 431 

nary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneli- 
ness. With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its 
birth, with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved 
down, with every revengeful passion that can fester in swollen 
hearts, eating its evil way to their core in silence, what an inci- 
pient Hell was breeding here ! 

And yet this scene, painful as it was, had its grotesque 
features, which, in a less interested observer than Nicholas, 
might have provoked a smile. Mrs. Squeers stood at one of 
the desks, presiding over an immense basin of brimstone and 
treacle, of which delicious compound she administered a large 
installment to each boy in succession, using for the purpose 
a common wooden spoon, which might have been originally 
manufactured for some gigantic top, and which widened every 
young gentleman's mouth considerably ; they being all obliged, 
under heavy corporal penalties, to take in the whole of the bowl 
at a gasp. In another corner, huddled together for companion- 
ship, were the little boys who had arrived on the preceding 
night, three of them in very large leather breeches, and two in 
old trousers, a somewhat tighter fit than drawers are usually 
worn ; at no great distance from these was seated a juvenile 
son and heir of Mr. Squeers — a striking likeness of his father — 
kicking with great vigor under the hands of Smike, who was 
fitting upon him a pair of new boots that bore almost suspicious 
resemblance to those which the least of the little boys had worn 
on the journey down — as the little boy himself seemed to think, 
for he was regarding the appropriation with a look of most rue- 
ful amazement. Besides these, there was a long row of boys 
waiting, with countenances of no pleasant anticipation, to be 
treacled ; and another file, who had just escaped from the inflic- 
tion, making a variety of wry mouths, indicative of anything 
but satisfaction. The whole were attired in such motley, ill- 
sorted, extraordinary garments, as would have been irresistibly 
ridiculous, but for the foul appearance of dirt, disorder, and dis- 
ease, with which they were associated. 

" Now," said Squeers, giving the desk a great rap with his 



432 CHARLES BIGKENS . 

cane, which made half the little boys nearly jump out of their 
boots, " is that physicking over ? " 

" Just over," said Mrs. Squeers, choking the last boy in her 
hurry, and tapping the crown of his head with the wooden 
spoon to restore him. " Here, you Smike ; take this away now. 
Look sharp ! " 

Smike shuffled out with the basin, and Mrs. Squeers, having 
called up a little boy with a curly head and wiped her hands 
upon it, hurried out after him into a species of wash-house, 
where there was a small fire and a large kettle, together with 
a number of little wooden bowls which were arranged upon a 
board. 

Into these bowls, Mrs. Squeers, assisted by the hungry ser- 
vant, poured a brown composition, which looked like diluted 
pincushions without the covers, and was called porridge. A 
minute wedge of brown bread was inserted in each bowl, and 
when they had eaten the porridge by means of the bread, the 
boys ate the bread itself, and had finished their breakfast ; 
whereupon Mr. Squeers said, in a solemn voice : " For what we 
have received, may the Lord make us truly thankful ! " — and 
went away to his own. 

Nicholas distended his stomach with a bowl of porridge, for 
much the same reason which induces some savages to swallow 
earth — lest they should be inconveniently hungry when there 
is nothing to eat. Having further disposed of a slice of bread 
and butter, allotted to him in virtue of his office, he sat himself 
down to wait for school time. 

He could not but observe how silent and sad the boys all 
seemed to be. There was none of the noise and clamor of a 
schoolroom ; none of its boisterous play or hearty mirth. The 
children sat crouching and shivering together, and seemed to 
lack the spirit to move about. The only pupil who evinced 
the slightest tendency toward locomotion or playfulness was 
Master Squeers, and as his chief amusement was to tread upon 
the other boys' toes, in his new boots, his flow of spirits was 
rather disagreeable than otherwise. 



LOTHEBOTS HALL 433 

After some half hour's delay, Mr. Sqiieers reappeared, and 
the boys took their places and their books, of which latter com- 
modity the average might be about one to eight learners. A 
few minutes having elapsed, during which Mr. Squeers looked 
very profound, as if he had a perfect apprehension of what was 
inside all the books, and could say every word of their contents 
by heart if he only chose to take the trouble, that gentleman 
called up the first class. 

Obedient to this summons, there ranged themselves in front 
of the schoolmaster's desk half a dozen scarecrows, out at knees 
and elbows, one of whom placed a torn and filthy book beneath 
his learned eye. 

" This is the first class in English spelling and philosophy, 
Nickleby," said Squeers, beckoning Nicholas to stand beside 
him. " We'll get up a Latin one, and hand that over to you. 
Now, then, where's the first boy ? " 

" Please, sir, he's cleaning the back parlor window," said the 
temporary head of the philosophical class. 

" So he is, to be sure," rejoined Squeers. " We go upon the 
practical mode of teaching, Nickleby; the regular education 
system. C-1-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. 
W-i-n, win, d-e-r, winder,- a casement. When the boy knows 
this out of book, he goes and does it. It's just the same prin- 
ciple as the use of the globes. Where's the second boy ? " 

" Please, sir, he's weeding the garden," replied a small voice. 

" To be sure," said Squeers, by no means disconcerted. " So 
he is. B-o-t, bot, t-i-n, bottin, n-e-y, ney, bottinney, noun sub- 
stantive, a knowledge of plants. When he has learned that 
bottinney means a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows 
'em. That's our system, Nickleby ; what do you think of it ? " 

" It's a very useful one, at any rate," answered Nicholas. 

" I believe you," rejoined Squeers, not remarking the empha- 
sis of his usher. " Third boy, what's a horse ? " 

" A beast, sir," replied the boy. 

" So it is," said Squeers. " Ain't it, Nickleby ? " 

" I believe there is no doubt of that, sir," answered Nicholas, 
s. M.— 38 



434 CHARLES D1QKEN8 

" Of course there isn't," said Squeers. " A horse is a quad- 
ruped, and quadruped's Latin for beasts, as everybody that's 
gone through the grammar knows, or else where's the use of 
having grammars at all ? " 

" Where, indeed ! " said Nicholas, abstractedly. 

" As you're perfect in that," resumed Squeers, turning to the 
boy, " go and look after my horse, and rub him down well, or 
I'll rub you down. The rest of the class go and draw water up, 
till somebody tells you to leave off, for it's washing-day to-mor- 
row, and they want the coppers filled." 

So saying, he dismissed the first class to their experiments in 
practical philosophy, and eyed Nicholas with a look, half cun- 
ning and half doubtful, as if he were not altogether certain 
what he might think of him by this time. 

" That's the way we do it, Nickleby," he said, after a pause. 

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders in a manner that was 
scarcely perceptible, and said he saw it was. 

" And a very good way it is, too," said Squeers. " Now, just 
take them fourteen little boys and hear them some reading, 
because, you know, you must begin to be useful. Idling about 
here won't do." 

Mr. Squeers said this, as if it suddenly occurred to him either 
that he must not say too much to his assistant, or that his as- 
sistant did not say enough to him in praise of the establishment. 
The children were arranged in a semicircle round their new 
master, and he was soon listening to their dull, drawling, hesi- 
tating recital of those stories of engrossing interest which are to 
be found in the more antiquated spelling-books. 

In this exciting occupation, the morning lagged heavily on. 
At one o'clock, the boys, having previously had their appetites 
thoroughly taken away by stirabout and potatoes, sat down 
in the kitchen to some hard salt beef, of which Nicholas was 
graciously permitted to take his portion to his own solitary 
desk, to eat it there in peace. After this, there was another 
hour of crouching in the schoolroom and shivering with cold, 
and then school began again. 



D0THEB0T8 HALL 435 

It was Mr. Squeers's custom to call the boys together, and 
make a sort of report, after every half yearly visit to the me- 
tropolis, regarding the relations and friends he had seen, the 
news he had heard, the letters he had brought down, the bills 
which had been paid, the accounts which had been left unpaid, 
and so forth. This solemn proceeding always took place in the 
afternoon of the day succeeding his return ; perhaps, because 
the boys acquired strength of mind from the suspense of the 
morning, or, possibly, because Mr. Squeers himself acquired 
greater sternness and inflexibility from certain warm potations 
in which he was wont to indulge after his early dinner. Be 
this as it may, the boys were recalled from house-window, 
garden, stable, and cow-yard, and the school were assembled in 
full conclave, when Mr. Squeers, with a small bundle of papers 
in his hand, and Mrs. S. following with a pair of canes, entered 
the room and proclaimed silence. 

" Let any boy speak a word without leave," said Mr. Squeers, 
mildly, " and I'll take the skin off his back." 

This special proclamation had the desired effect, and a death- 
like silence immediately prevailed, in the midst of which Mr. 
Squeers went on to say : 

" Boys, I have been to London, and have returned to my 
family and you, as strong and well as ever." 

According to half-yearly custom, the boys gave three feeble 
cheers at this refreshing intelligence. Such cheers ! Sighs of 
extra strength with the chill on. 

" I have seen the parents of some boys," continued Squeers, 
turning over his papers, " and they're so glad to hear how 
their sons are getting on, that there's no prospect at all of their 
going away, which of course is a very pleasant thing to reflect 
upon, for all parties." 

Two or three hands went to two or three eyes when Squeers 
said this, but the greater part of the young gentlemen having 
no particular parents to speak of, were wholly uninterested in 
the thing one way or other. 

" I have had disappointments to contend against," said 



436 CHARLES DICKENS 

Squeers, looking very grim ; " Bolder's father was two pound 
ten short. Where is Bolder ? " 

"Here he is, please sir," rejoined twenty officious voices. 
Boys are very like men to be sure. 

"Come here, Bolder," said Squeers. 

An unhealthy-looking boy, with warts all over his hands, 
stepped from his place to the master's desk, and raised his eyes 
imploringly to Squeers's face ; his own, quite white from the 
rapid beating of his heart. 

" Bolder," said Squeers, speaking very slowly, for he was con- 
sidering, as the saying goes, where to have him. " Bolder, if 
your father thinks that because — why, what's this, sir ? " 

As Squeers spoke he caught up the boy's hand by the cuff of 
his jacket, and surveyed it with an edifying aspect of horror 
and disgust. 

" What do you call this, sir ? " demanded the schoolmaster, 
administering a cut with the cane to expedite the reply. 

" I can't help it, indeed, sir," rejoined the boy, crying. 
" They will come ; it's the dirty work, I think, sir — at least I 
don't know what it is, sir, but it's not my fault." 

"Bolder," said Squeers, tucking up his wristbands, and 
moistening the palm of his right hand to get a good grip of the 
cane, " you are an incorrigible young scoundrel, and as the last 
thrashing did you no good we must see what another will do 
toward beating it out of you." 

With this, and wholly disregarding a piteous cry for mercy, 
Mr. Squeers fell upon the boy and caned him soundly; not 
leaving off, indeed, until his arm was tired out. 

"There," said Squeers, when he had quite done; "rub away 
as hard as you like you won't rub that off in a hurry. Oh ! 
you won't hold that noise, won't you ? Put him out, Smike." 

The drudge knew better, from long experience, than to 
hesitate about obeying, so he bundled the victim out by a 
side door, and Mr. Squeers perched himself again on his own 
stool, supported by Mrs. Squeers, who occupied another at his 
side. 



DOTHEBOYS HALL 437 

" Now let us see," said Squeers. " A letter for Cobbey. Stand 
up, Cobbey." 

Another boy stood up, and eyed the letter very hard while 
Squeers made a mental abstract of the same. 

" Oh ! " said Squeers ; " Cobbey's grandmother is dead, and 
his uncle John has took to drinking, which is all the news his 
sister sends, except eighteenpence, which will just pay for that 
broken square of glass. Mrs. Squeers, my dear, will you take 
the mone}" ? " 

The worthy lady pocketed the eighteenpence with a most 
business-like air, and Squeers passed on to the next boy, as 
coolly as possible. 

" Graymarsh," said Squeers, " he's the next. Stand up. Gray- 
marsh." 

Another boy stood up, and the schoolmaster looked over the 
letter as before. 

"Graymarsh's maternal aunt," said Squeers, when he had 
possessed himself of the contents, '' is very glad to hear he's so 
well and happy, and sends her respectful compliments to Mrs. 
Squeers, and thinks she must be an angel. She likewise thinks 
Mr. Squeers is too good for this world ; but hopes he may long 
be spared to carry on the business. Would have sent the two 
pair of stockings as desired, but is short of money, so forwards 
a tract instead, and hopes Grajanarsh will put his trust in 
Providence. Hopes, above all, that he will study in everything 
to please Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, and look upon them as his only 
friends ; and that he will love Master Squeers ; and not object to 
sleeping five in a bed, which no Christian should. Ah ! " said 
Squeers, folding it up, " a delightful letter. Very affecting indeed." 

It was affecting in one sense, for Graymarsh's maternal aunt 
was strongly supposed, by her more intimate friends, to be no 
other than his maternal parent: Squeers, however, without 
alluding to this part of the story (which would have sounded 
immoral before boys), proceeded with the business by calling 
out " Mobbs," whereupon another boy rose, and Graymarsh 
resumed his seat. 



438 CHARLES DICKENS 

"Mobbs's mother-in-law," said Squeers, "took to her bed on 
hearing that he wouldn't eat fat, and has been very ill ever 
since.- She wishes to know, by an early post, where he expects 
to go to if he quarrels with his vittles; and with what feelings he 
could turn up his nose at the cow's liver broth, after his good 
master had asked a blessing on it. This was told her in the 
London newspapers — not by Mr. Squeers, for he is too kind and 
too good to set anybody against anybody — and it has vexed 
her so much, Mobbs can't think. She is sorry to find he is dis- 
contented, wliich is sinful and horrid, and hopes Mr. Squeers 
will flog him into a happier state of mind; with this view, she 
has also stopped his half penny a week pocket money, and 
given a double-bladed knife with a corkscrew in it to the Mis- 
sionaries, which she had bought on purpose for him." 

" A sulky state of feeling," said Squeers after a terrible pause, 
during which he had moistened the palm of his right hand 
again, " won't do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept 
up. Mobbs, come to me ! " 

Mobbs moved slowly toward the desk, rubbing his eyes in 
anticipation of good cause for doing so ; and he soon afterward 
retired by the side door, with as good cause as a boy need have. 

Mr. Squeers then proceeded to open a miscellaneous collection 
of letters; some inclosing money, which Mrs. Squeers "took care 
of;" and others referring to small articles of apparel, as caps 
and so forth, all of which the same lady stated to be too large, 
or too small, and calculated for nobody but young Squeers, who 
would appear indeed to have had most accommodating limbs, 
since everything that came into the school fitted him to a 
nicety. His head, in particular, must have been singularly 
elastic, for hats and caps of all dimensions were alike to him. 

The business dispatched, a few slovenly lessons were per- 
formed, and Squeers retired to his fireside, leaving Nicholas to 
take care of the boys in the schoolroom, which was very cold, 
and where a meal of bread and cheese was served out shortly 
after dark. 

There was a small stove at that corner of the room which 



DOTHEBOTS HALL 439 

was nearest to the master's desk, and by it Nicholas sat down, 
so depressed and self-degraded by the consciousness of his posi- 
tion, that if death could have come upon him at that time, he 
would have been almost happy to meet it. The cruelty of 
which he had been an unwilling witness, the coarse and ruf- 
fianly behavior of Squeers, even in his best moods, the filthy 
place, the sights and sounds about him, all contributed to this 
state of feeling ; but when he recollected that, being there as an 
assistant, he actually seemed — no matter what unhappy train 
of circumstances had brought him to that pass — to be the aider 
and abettor of a system which filled him with honest disgust 
and indignation, he loathed himself, and felt, for the moment, 
as though the mere consciousness of his present situation must, 
through all time to come, prevent his raising his head again. 

But, for the present, his resolve was taken, and the resolution" 
he had formed on the preceding night remained undisturbed. 
He had written to his mother and sister, announcing the safe 
conclusion of his journey, and saying as little about Dotheboys 
Hall, and saying that little as cheerfully, as he possibly could. 
He hoped that by remaining where he was, he might do some 
good, even there ; at all events, others depended too much on 
his uncle's favor, to admit of his awakening his wrath just then. 

One reflection disturbed him far more than any selfish con- 
sideration arising out of his own position. This was the 
probable destination of his sister Kate. His uncle had deceived 
him, and might he not consign her to some miserable place 
where her youth and beauty would prove a far greater curse 
than ugliness and decrepitude ? To a caged man, bound hand 
and foot, this was a terrible idea ; but no, he thought, his 
mother was by ; there was the portrait-painter, too — simple 
enough, but still living in the world and of it. He was willing 
to believe that Ralph Mckleby had conceived a personal dislike 
to himself. Having pretty good reason, by this time, to recip- 
rocate it, he had no great difficulty in arriving at this conclu- 
sion, and tried to persuade himself that the feeling extended 
no further than between them. 



440 CHARLES DICKENS 

As he was absorbed in these meditations, he all at once 
encountered the upturned face of Smike, who was on his knees 
before the stove, picking a few stray cinders from the hearth 
and planting them on the fire. He had paused to steal a look 
at Nicholas, and when he saw that he was observed, shrunk 
back as if expecting a blow. 

*' You need not fear me," said Nicholas, kindly. " Are you 
cold?" 

" N-n-o." 

" You are shivering." 

" I am not cold," replied Smike, quickly. " I am used to it." 

There was such an obvious fear of giving offence in his 
manner, and he was such a timid, broken-spirited creature, that 
Nicholas could not help exclaming, " Poor fellow ! " 

If he had struck the drudge, he would have slunk away with- 
out a word. But now he burst into tears. 

" Oh, dear, oh, dear ! " he cried, covering his face with his 
cracked and horny hands. '' My heart will break. It will, it 
will ! " 

" Hush ! " said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder. 
" be a man ; you are nearly one by years, God help you ! " 

" By years ! " cried Smike. " Oh, dear, dear, how many of 
them! How many of them since I was a little child, younger 
than any that are here now ! Where are they all ? " 

"Whom do you speak of?" inquired Nicholas, wishing to 
rouse the poor half-witted creature to reason. " Tell me." 

" My friends," he replied, " myself — my — oh ! what sufferings 
mine have been ! " 

" There is always hope," said Nicholas ; he knew not what to 
say. 

" No," rejoined the other ; " no, none for me. Do you remem- 
ber the boy that died here ? " 

"I was not here, you know," said Nicholas, gently; "but 
what of him?" 

" Why," replied the youth, drawing closer to his questioner's 
side, " I was with him at night, and when it was all silent he 



DOTHEBOYS HALL 441 

cried no more for friends he wished to come and sit with him, 
but began to see faces round his bed that came from home ; 
he said they smiled and talked to him ; and he died at last lift- 
ing his head to kiss them. Do you hear? " 

" Yes, yes," rejoined Nicholas. 

" What faces will smile on me when I die ? " cried his com- 
panion, shivering. " Who will talk to me in those long nights? 
They cannot come from home; they Avould frighten me if they 
did, for I don't know what it is, and shouldn't know them. 
Pain and fear, pain and fear for me, alive or dead. No hope, 
no hope ! " 

The bell rang to bed ; and the boy, subsiding at the sound 
into his usual listless state, crept away as if anxious to avoid 
notice. It was with a heavy heart that Nicholas soon afterward 
— no, not retired ; there was no retirement there — followed, to 
his dirty and crowded dormitory. 

The wretched creature, Smike, since the night Nicholas had 
spoken kindly to him in the schoolroom, had followed him to 
and fro, with an ever restless desire to serve or help him ; an- 
ticipating such little wants as his humble ability could supply, 
and content only to be near him. He would sit beside him 
for hours, looking patiently into his face ; and a word would 
brighten up his careworn visage, and call into it a passing 
gleam, even of happiness. He was an altered being ; he had 
an object now ; and that object was, to show his attachment to 
the only person — that person a stranger— who had treated him, 
not to say with kindness, but like a human creature. 

Upon this poor being, all the spleen and ill-humor that could 
not be vented on Nicholas were unceasingly bestowed. Drudg- 
ery would have been nothing — Smike was well used to that. 
Buffetings inflicted without cause, would have been equally a 
matter of course ; for to them also he had served a long and 
weary apprenticeship ; but it was no sooner observed that he 
had become attached to Nicholas, than stripes and blows, stripes 
and blows, morning, noon, and night, were his only portion. 



442 CHARLES DICKENS 

Squeers was jealous of the influence which his man had so 
soon acquired, and his family hated him, and Smike paid for 
both. Nicholas saw it, and ground his teeth at every repetition 
of the savage and cowardly attack. 

He had arranged a few regular lessons for the boys ; and one 
night as he paced up and down the schoolroom, his swollen 
heart almost bursting to think that his protection and counte- 
nance should have increased the misery of the wretched being 
whose peculiar destitution had awakened his pity, he paused 
mechanically in a dark corner where sat the object of his 
thoughts. 

The poor soul was poring hard over a tattered book, with the 
traces of recent tears still upon his face, vainly endeavoring to 
master some task which a child of nine years old, possessed of 
ordinary powers, could have conquered with ease, but which, 
to the addled brain of the crushed boy of nineteen, was a sealed 
and hopeless mystery. Yet there he sat, patiently conning 
the page again and again, stimulated .by no boyish ambition, 
for he was the common jest and scoff even of the uncouth 
objects that congregated about him, but inspired by the one 
eager desire to please his solitary friend. 

Nicholas laid his hand upon his shoulder. 

" I can't do it," said the dejected creature, looking up with 
bitter disappointment in every feature. " No, no." 

" Do not try," replied Nicholas. 

The boy shook his head, and, closing the book with a sigh, 
looked vacantly round, and laid his head upon his arm. He 
was weeping. 

" Do not, for God's sake," said Nicholas, in an agitated voice ; 
*' I cannot bear to see you." 

" They are more hard with me than ever," sobbed the boy. 

" I know it," rejoined Nicholas. " They are." 

" But for you," said the outcast, " I should die. They would 
kill me; they would; I know they would." 

"You will do better, poor fellow," replied Nicholas, shaking 
his head mournfully, " when I am gone." 



D0THEB0Y8 HALL 443 

" Gone! " cried the other, looking intently in his face. 

" Softly ! " rejoined Nicholas. " Yes." 

*' Are you going ? " demanded the boy, in an earnest whisper. 

" I cannot say," replied Nicholas. " I was speaking more to 
my own thoughts than to you." 

"Tell me," said the boy, imploringly, "oh, do tell me, tvill 
you go — IV ill you?" 

"I shall be driven to that at last!" said Nicholas. "The 
world is before me, after all." 

" Tell me," urged Smike, " is the world as bad and dismal as 
this place ? " 

" Heaven forbid ! " replied Nicholas, pursuing the train of 
his own thoughts. " Its hardest, coarsest toil were happiness 
to this." 

" Should I ever meet you there ? " demanded the boy, speak- 
ing with unusual wildness and volubility. 

" Yes," replied Nicholas, willing to soothe him. 

" No, no ! " said the other, clasping him by the hand. 
" Should I — should I — tell me that again. Say I should be 
sure to find you." 

" You would," replied Nicholas, with the same humane in- 
tention, " and I would help and aid you, and not bring fresh 
sorrow on you, as I have done here." 

The boy caught both the young man's hands passionately 
in his, and, hugging them to his breast, uttered a few broken 
sounds, which were unintelligible. Squeers entered, at the 
moment, and he shrank back into his old corner. . . . 

The cold, feeble dawn of a January morning was stealing in 
at the windows of the common sleeping-room, when Nicholas, 
raising himself on his arm, looked among the prostrate forms 
which on every side surrounded him, as though in search of 
some particular object. 

It needed a quick eye to detect, from among the huddled 
mass of sleepers, the form of any given individual. As they 
lay closely packed together, covered, for warmth's sake, with 
their patched and ragged clothes, little could be distinguished 



444 CHARLES DICEENa 

but the sharp outlines of pale faces, over which the somber 
light shed the same dull heavy color ; with here and there a 
gaunt arm thrust forth ; its thinness hidden by no covering, 
but fully exposed to view, in all its shrunken ugliness. There 
were some who, lying on their backs with upturned faces and 
clinched hands, just visible in the leaden light, bore more the 
aspect of dead bodies than of living creatures ; and there were 
others coiled up into strange and fantastic postures, such as 
might have been taken for the uneasy efforts of pain to gain 
some temporary relief, rather than the freaks of slumber. A 
few — and these were among the youngest of the children — slept 
peacefully on, with smiles upon their faces, dreaming perhaps 
of home ; but ever and again a deep and heavy sigh, breaking 
the stillness of the room, announced that some new sleeper had 
awakened to the misery of another day ; and, as morning took 
the place of night, the smiles gradually faded away, with the 
friendly darkness which had given them birth. 

Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who 
sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first 
beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on 
their daily pilgrimage through the world. 

Nicholas looked upon the sleepers ; at first, with the air of 
one who gazes upon a scene which, though familiar to him, 
has lost none of its sorrowful effect in consequence ; and after- 
ward, with a more intense and searching scrutiny, as a man 
would who missed something his eye was accustomed to meet, 
and had expected to rest upon. He was still occupied in this 
search, and had half risen from his bed in the eagerness of 
his quest, when the voice of Squeers was heard, calling from 
the bottom of the stairs. 

" Now, then," cried that gentleman, " are you going to sleep 
all day up there " 

" You lazy hounds ! " added Mrs. Squeers, finishing the sen- 
tence, and producing at the same time a sharp sound, like that 
which is occasioned by the lacing of stays. 

" We shall be down directly, sir," replied Nicholas. 



D0THEB0T8 HALL 445 

"Down directly!" said Squeers. "Ah! you had better be 
down directly, or I'll be down upon some of you in less. 
Where's that Smike?" 

Nicholas looked hurriedly round again, but made no answer. 

" Smike ! " shouted Squeers. 
. "Do you want your head broke in a fresh place, Smike?" 
demanded his amiable lady, in the same key. 

Still there was no reply, and still Nicholas stared about him, 
as did the greater part of the boys, who were by this time 
roused. 

" Confound his impudence ! " muttered Squeers, rapping the 
stair- rail impatiently with his cane. "Nickleby ! " 

"Well, sir?" 

" Send that obstinate scoundrel down ; don't you hear me 
calling?" 

" He is not here, sir," replied Nicholas. 

" Don't tell me a lie ! " retorted the schoolmaster. " He is." 

" He is not," retorted Nicholas, angrily ; " don't tell me one." 

" We shall soon see that," said Mr. Squeers, rushing upstairs. 
" I'll find him, I warrant you." 

With which assurance Mr. Squeers bounced into the dormi- 
tory, and, swinging his cane in the air ready for a blow, darted 
into the corner where the lean body of the drudge was usually 
stretched at night. The cane descended harmlessly upon the 
ground. There was nobody there. 

" What does this mean ? " said Squeers, turning round, with 
a very queer face. " Where have you hid him ? " 

" I have seen nothing of him since last night," replied 
Nicholas. 

" Come," said Squeers, evidently frightened, though he en- 
deavored to look otherwise, "you won't save him this way. 
Where is he?" 

" At the bottom of the nearest pond for aught I know," re- 
joined Nicholas in a low voice, and fixing his eyes full on the 
master's face. 

" D — n you, what do you mean by that ? " retorted Squeers 



446 CHARLES DICKENS 

in great perturbation. Without waiting for a reply, he inquired 
of the boys whether any one among them knew anything of 
their missing schoolmate. 

There was a general hum of anxious denial, in the midst of 
which, one shrill voice was heard to say (as indeed, everybody 
thought) : 

" Please, sir, I think Smike's run away, sir." 

"Ha! " cried Squeers, turning sharp round. "Who said that? " 

"Tomkins, please, sir," rejoined a chorus of voices. Mr. 
Squeers made a plunge into the crowd, and at one dive, caught 
a very little boy, habited still in his night gear, and the per- 
plexed expression of whose countenance as he was brought for- 
ward, seemed to intimate that he was as yet uncertain whether 
he was about to be punished or rewarded for the suggestion. 
He was not long in doubt. 

" You think he has run away, do you, sir ? " demanded 
Squeers. 

" Yes, please, sir," replied the little boy. 

" And what, sir," said Squeers, catching the little boy sud- 
denly by the arms and whisking up his drapery in a most dex- 
terous manner ; " what reason have you to suppose that any 
boy would want to run away from this establishment? Eh, 
sir?" 

The child raised a dismal cry, by way of answer, and Mr. 
Squeers, throwing himself into the most favorable attitude for 
exercising his strength, beat him until the little urchin in his 
writhings actually rolled out of his hands, when he mercifully 
allowed him to roll away, as best he could. 

" There," said Squeers. " Now, if any other boy thinks Smike 
has run away, I should be glad to have a talk with him." 

There was, of course, a profound silence, during which Nicho- 
las showed his disgust as plainly as looks could show it. 

" Well, Nickleby," said Squeers, eyeing him maliciously. 
*' You think he has run away, I suppose ? " 

"I think it extremely likely," replied Nicholas, in a quiet 
manner. 



D0TEEB0T8 HALL 447 

" Oh, you do, do you ? " sneered Squeers. " Maybe you know 
he has?" 

" I know nothing of the kind." 

" He didn't tell you he was going, I suppose, did he?" sneered 
Squeers. 

" He did not," replied Nicholas ; " I am very glad he did 
not, for it would then have been my duty to have warned you 
in time." 

" Which no doubt you would have been devilish sorry to 
do," said Squeers, in a taunting fashion. 

" I should, indeed," replied Nicholas. " You interpret my 
feelings with great accuracy." 

Mrs. Squeers had listened to this conversation from the bottom 
of the stairs, but, now losing all patience, she hastily assumed 
her night-jacket, and made her way to the scene of action. 

" What's all this here to do ? " said the lady, as the boys fell 
off right and left, to save her the trouble of clearing a passage 
with her brawny arms. " What on earth are you talking to 
him for, Squeery ? " 

" Why, my dear," said Squeers, " the fact is, that Smike is 
not to be found." 

" Well I know that," said the lady, '' and where's the wonder ? 
If you get a parcel of proud-stomached teachers that set the 
young dogs a rebelling, what else can you look for? Now, 
young man, you just have the kindness to take yourself off to 
the schoolroom, and take the boys off with you, and don't you 
stir out of there till you have leave given you, or you and I 
may fall out in a way that'll spoil your beauty, handsome as 
you think yourself, and so I tell you." 

" Indeed ! " said Nicholas. 

" Yes ; and indeed and indeed again. Mister Jackanapes," said 
the excited lady ; " and I wouldn't keep such as you in the 
house another hour, if I had my way." 

" Nor would you if I had mine," replied Nicholas. " Now, 
boys!" 

" Ah ! Now, boys," said Mrs. Squeers, mimicking, as nearly 



448 CHARLES DICKENS 

as she could, the voice and manner of the usher. " Follow your 
leader, boys, and take pattern by Smike, if you dare. See what 
he'll get for himself, when he is brought back ; and, mind ! I 
tell you that you shall have as bad and twice as bad, if you so 
much as open your mouths about him." 

" If I, catch him," said Squeers, "I'll only stop short of flaying 
him alive. I give you notice, boys." 

" If you catch him," retorted Mrs. Squeers, contemptuously, 
" you are sure to ; you can't help it, if you go the right way to 
work ! Come ! Away with you ! " 

With these words, Mrs. Squeers dismissed the boys, and after 
a little light skirmishing with those in the rear who were press- 
ing forward to get out of the way, but were detained for a few 
moments by the throng in front, succeeded in clearing the room, 
when she confronted her spouse alone. 

" He is off! " said Mrs. Squeers. " The cow-house and stable 
are locked up, so he can't be there ; and he's not down-stairs 
anywhere, for the girl has looked. He must have gone York 
way, and by a public road, too." 

'' Why must he ? " inquired Squeers. 

" Stupid ! " said Mrs. Squeers, angrily. " He hadn't any 
money, had he ? " 

" Never had a penny of his own in his whole life, that I know 
of," replied Squeers. 

, " To be sure," rejoined Mrs. Squeers, " and he didn't take any- 
thing to eat with him ; that I'll answer for. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " 

"■ Ha ! ha ! ha ! " laughed Squeers. 

" Then, of course," said Mrs. S., " he must beg his way, and 
he could do that, nowhere, but on the public road." 

" That's true," exclaimed Squeers, clapping his hands. 

" True ! Yes ; but you would never have thought of it, for 
all that, if I hadn't said so," replied his wife. " Now, if you 
take the chaise and go one road, and I borrow Swallow's chaise 
and go the other, what with keeping our eyes open, and asking 
questions, one or other of us is pretty certain to lay hold of 
him." 



DOTHEBOYS HALL 449 

The worthy lady's plan was adopted and put in execution 
without a moment's delay. After a very hasty breakfast, and 
the prosecution of some inquiries in the village, the result of 
which seemed to show that he was on the right track, Squeers 
started forth in the pony-chaise, intent upon discovery and 
vengeance. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Squeers, arrayed in the 
white top-coat, and tied up in various shawls and handker- 
chiefs, issued forth in another chaise and another direction, tak- 
ing with her a good-sized bludgeon, several odd pieces of strong 
cord, and a stout laboring man — all provided and carried upon 
the expedition, with the sole object of assisting in the capture, 
and (once caught) insuring the safe custody of the unfortunate 
Smike. 

Nicholas remained behind, in a tumult of feeling, sensible 
that whatever might be the upshot of the boy's flight, nothing 
but jDainful and deplorable consequences were likely to ensue 
from it. Death, from want and exposure to the weather, was 
the best that could be expected from the protracted wandering 
of so poor and helpless a creature, alone and unfriended, through 
a country of which he was wholly ignorant. There was little, 
perhaps, to choose between this fate and a return to the tender 
mercies of the Yorkshire school ; but the unhappy being had 
established a hold upon his sympathy and compassion, which 
made his heart ache at the prospect of the suffering he was 
destined to undergo. He lingered on in restless anxiety, pictur- 
ing a thousand possibilities, until the evening of the next day, 
when Squeers returned alone and unsuccessful. 

" No news of the scamp ! " said the schoolmaster, who had 
evidently been stretching his legs, on the old principle, not a 
few times during the journey. " I'll have consolation for this 
out of somebody, Nickleby, if Mrs. Squeers don't hunt him 
down. So I give you warning." 

" It is not in my power to console you, sir," said Nicholas. 
" It is nothing to me." 

" Isn't it ? " said Squeers, in a threatening manner. " We 
shall see ! " 

s. M.— 39 



450 GEARLE8 DICKENS 

" We shall," rejoined Nicholas. 

" Here's the pony run right off his legs, and me obliged to 
come home with a hack cob, that'll cost fifteen shillings besides 
other expenses," said Squeers; "who's to pay for that, do you 
hear?" 

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders, and remained silent. 

" I'll have it out of somebody, I tell you," said Squeers, his 
usual harsh, crafty manner changed to open bullying. " None 
of your whining vaporings here, Mr. Puppy ; but be off to your 
kennel, for it's past your bed-time ! Come, get out ! " 

Nicholas bit his lip and knit his hands involuntarily, for 
his finger-ends tingled to avenge the insult; but remembering 
that the man was drunk, and that it could come to little but a 
noisy brawl, he contented himself with darting a contemptuous 
look at the tyrant, and walked, as majestically as he could, up- 
stairs ; not a little nettled, however, to observe that Miss Squeers, 
and Master Squeers, and the servant girl, were enjoying the scene 
from a snug corner; the two former indulging in many edify- 
ing remarks about the presumption of poor upstarts, which 
occasioned a vast deal of laughter, in which even the most 
miserable of all miserable servant girls joined ; while Nicholas, 
stung to the quick, drew over his head such bed-clothes as he 
had, and sternly resolved that the outstanding account between 
himself and Mr. Squeers should be settled rather more speedily 
than the latter anticipated. 

Another day came, and Nicholas was scarcely awake when 
he heard the wheels of a chaise approaching the house. It 
stopped. The voice of Mrs. Squeers was heard, and in exul- 
tation, ordering a glass of spirits for somebody, which was in 
itself a sufficient sign that something extraordinary had hap- 
pened. Nicholas hardly dared to look out of the window ; but 
he did so, and the very first object that met his eyes was the 
wretched Smike so bedabbled with mud and rain, so haggard, 
and worn, and wild, that, but for his garments being such as 
no scarecrow was ever seen to wear, he might have been doubt- 
ful, even then, of his identity. 



DOTHEBOrS HALL 451 

" Lift him out," said Squeers, after he had literally feasted 
his eyes in silence upon the culprit. " Bring him in ; bring 
him in ! " 

" Take care," cried Mrs. Squeers, as her husband proffered 
his assistance. " We tied his legs under the apron and made 
'em fast to the chaise, to prevent him giving us the slip again." 

With hands trembling with delight, Squeers unloosened the 
cord ; and Smike, to all appearance more dead than alive, was 
brought into the house and securely locked up in a cellar, until 
such time as Mr. Squeers should deem it expedient to operate 
upon him, in presence of the assembled school. 

Upon a hasty consideration of the circumstances it may be 
matter of surprise to some persons that Mr. and Mrs. Squeers 
should have taken so much trouble to repossess themselves 
of an incumbrance of which it was their wont to complain so 
loudly ; but their surprise will cease when they are informed 
that the manifold services of the drudge, if performed by any- 
body else, would have cost the establishment some ten or twelve 
shillings per week in the shape of wages ; and, furthermore, that 
all runaways were, as a matter of policy, made severe examples 
of at Dotheboys Hall, inasmuch as, in consequence of the limited 
extent of its attractions, there was but little inducement beyond 
the powerful impulse of fear, for any pupil, provided with the 
usual number of legs, and the power of using them, to remain. 

The news that Smike had been caught and brought back 
in triumph ran like wild-fire through the hungry commu- 
nity, and expectation was on tiptoe all the morning. On tiptoe 
it was destined to remain, however, until afternoon ; when 
Squeers, having refreshed himself with his dinner, and fur- 
ther strengthened himself by an extra libation or so, made his 
appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a coun- 
tenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of 
flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new — in short, 
purchased that morning expressly for the occasion. 

" Is every boy here ? " asked Squeers, in a tremendous voice. 

Every boy was there, but every boy was afraid to speak j so 



452 CHARLES DIGEEN8 

Squeers glared along the lines to assure himself ; and every eyQ 
drooped, and every head cowered down, as he did so. 

" Each boy keep his place," said Squeers, administering his 
favorite blow to the desk, and regarding with gloomy satisfac- 
tion the universal start which it never failed to occasion. 
" Nickleby ! to your desk, sir." 

It was remarked by more than one small observer that there 
was a very curious and unusual expression in the usher's face ; 
but he took his seat without opening his lips in reply. Squeers, 
casting a triumphant glance at his assistant and a look of most 
comprehensive despotism on the boys, left the room, and 
shortly afterward returned, dragging Smike by the collar — or 
rather by that fragment of his jacket which was nearest the 
place where his collar would have been, had he boasted such a 
decoration. 

In any other place, the appearance of the wretched, jaded, 
spiritless object would have occasioned a murmur of compas- 
sion and remonstrance. It had some effect even there ; for the 
lookers-on moved uneasily in their seats, and a few of the 
boldest ventured to steal looks at each other, expressive of 
indignation and pity. 

They were lost on Squeers, however, whose gaze was fastened 
on the luckless Smike, as he inquired, according to custom in 
such cases, whether he had anything to say for himself. 

" Nothing, I suppose ? " said Squeers, with a diabolical grin. 

Smike glanced round, and his eye rested, for an instant, on 
Nicholas, as if he had expected him to intercede ; but his look 
was riveted on his desk. 

" Have you anything to say ? " demanded Squeers again ; 
giving his right arm two or three flourishes to try its power 
and suppleness. " Stand a little out of the way, Mrs. Squeers, 
my dear ; I've hardly got room enough." 

" Spare me, sir ! " cried Smike. 

"Oh! that's all, is it?" said Squeers. "Yes, I'll flog you 
within an inch of your life, and spare you that." 

" Ha, ha, ha ! " laughed Mrs. Squeers, " that's a good 'un ! " 



D0THEB0Y8 HALL . 453 

" I was driven to do it," said Smike, faintly ; and casting 
another imploring look about him. 

" Driven to do it, were you ? " said Squeers. " Oh ! it wasn't 
your fault ; it was mine, I suppose — eh ? " 

" A nasty, ungrateful, pig-headed brutish, obstinate, sneaking 
dog," exclaimed Mrs. Squeers, taking Smike's head under her 
arm, and administering a cuff at every epithet ; " what does he 
mean by that ? " 

" Stand aside, my dear," replied Squeers. " We'll try and 
find out." 

Mrs. Squeers being out of breath with her exertions, com- 
plied. Squeers caught the boy firmly in his grip ; one desperate 
cut had fallen on his body — he was wincing from the lash and 
uttering a scream of pain — it was raised again, and again about 
to fall — when Nicholas Nickleby suddenly starting up, cried, 
'* Stop ! " in a voice that made the rafters ring. 

" Who cried stop ? " said Squeers, turning savagely round. 

'' I," said Nicholas, stepping forward. " This must not go 
on." 

" Must not go on ! " cried Squeers, almost in a shriek. 

" No ! " thundered Nicholas. 

Aghast and stupefied by the boldness of the interference, 
Squeers released his hold of Smike, and, falling back a pace 
or two, gazed upon Nicholas with looks that were positively 
frightful. 

" I say must not," repeated Nicholas, nothing daunted ; 
" shall not. I will j)revent it." 

Squeers continued to gaze upon him, with his eyes starting 
out of his head ; but astonishment had actually for the moment 
bereft him of speech. 

" You have disregarded all my quiet interference in the 
miserable lad's behalf," said Nicholas ; " you have returned no 
answer to the letter in which I begged forgiveness for him, and 
offered to be responsible that he would remain quietly here. 
Don't blame me for this public interference. You have brought 
it upon yourself; not I." 



464 CHARLES DICKENS 

" Sit down, beggar ! " screamed Sqiieers, almost beside him- 
self with rage, and seizing Smike as he spoke. 

"Wretch," rejoined Nicholas, fiercely, "touch him at your 
peril ! I will not stand by and see it done. My blood is up, 
and I have the strength of ten such men as you. Look to 
yourself, for by Heaven I will not spare you, if you drive 
me on ! " 

" Stand back ! " cried Squeers, brandishing his weapon. 

" I have a long series of insults to avenge," said Nicholas, 
flushed with passion ; " and my indignation is aggravated by 
the dastardly cruelties practiced on helpless infancy in this foul 
den. Have a care ; for if you do raise the devil within me, the 
consequences shall fall heavily upon your own head ! " 

He had scarcely spoken, when Squeers, in a violent outbreak 
of wrath, and with a cry like the howl of a wild beast, spat 
upon him, and struck him a blow across the face with his 
instrument of torture, which raised up a bar of livid flesh as 
it was inflicted. Smarting with the agony of the blow and 
concentrating into that one moment all his feelings of rage, 
scorn and indignation, Nicholas sprang upon him, wrested the 
weapon from his hand, and pinning him by the throat, beat 
the ruffian till he roared for mercy. 

The boys — with the exception of Master Squeers, who, com- 
ing to his father's assistance, harassed the enemy in the rear — 
moved not, hand or foot ; but Mrs. Squeers, with many shrieks 
for aid, hung on to the tail of her partner's coat, and endeavored 
to drag him from his infuriated adversary ; while Miss Squeers 
who had been peeping through the key-hole in the expectation 
of a very diff'erent scene, darted in at the very beginning of the 
attack, and after launching a shower of ink-stands at the 
usher's head, beat Nicholas to her heart's content, animating 
herself, at every blow, with the recollection of his having 
refused her proffered love, and thus imparting additional 
strength to an arm which (as she took after her mother in this 
respect) was, at no time, one of the weakest. 

Nicholas, in the full torrent of his violence, felt the blows no 



D0THEB0Y8 HALL 455 

more than if they had been dealt with feathers ; but, becoming 
tired of the noise and uproar, and feeling that his arm grew 
weak besides, he threw all his remaining strength into half-a- 
dozen finishing cuts, and flung Squeers from him, with all the 
force he could muster. The violence of his fall precipitated 
Mrs. Squeers completely over an adjacent form ; and Squeers, 
striking his head against it in his descent, lay at his full length 
on the ground, stunned and motionless. 

Having brought affairs to this happy termination, and ascer- 
tained, to his thorough satisfaction, that Squeers was only 
stunned, and not dead (upon which point he had had some 
unpleasant doubts at first), Nicholas left his family to restore 
him, and retired to consider what course he had better adopt. 
He looked anxiously round for Smike, as he left the room, but 
he was nowhere to be seen. 

After a brief consideration, he packed up a few clothes in 
a small leathern valise, and, finding that nobody offered to 
oppose his progress, marched boldly out by the front door, and, 
shortly afterward, struck into the road which led to Greta 
Bridge. 



WILLIAM MATHEWS 

18 18 

William Mathews was born in Waterville, Maine, in 1818. He was 
a precocious pupil, and entered Waterville College (now Colby Uni- 
versity), at the age of thirteen. Here he was graduated in 1835. He 
studied law at Harvard University, but abandoned the legal practice 
after a binef experience as an attorney. He established at Waterville 
a famous literary paper, the Yankee Blade, which was subsequently 
transferred to Boston. 

Dr. Mathews removed in 1856 to Chicago, where he engaged in 
literary work. For twelve years or more he was professor of litera- 
ture in the University of Chicago. Having published two books which 
had an extraordinary sale, he resigned his chair in order to devote 
himself wholly to literature. In 1880 Dr. Mathews removed to Bos- 
ton, where he has since resided. 

His principal works are ' ' Getting on in the World " (which has been 
reproduced in London and in Canada, and translated into Swedish, 
Norwegian and Magyar); "The Great Conversers;" "Words: their 
Use and Abuse;" "Hours with Men and Books;" " Monday Chats : a 
Translation of Selectious from Saint Beuve's ' Causeries du Lundi;'" 
"Orators and Oratory; " " Literary Style, and other Essays; " " Men, 
Places and Things," and "Wit and Humor: their Use and Abuse." 

Characterization 

It is not every one who has been able to be useful when aiming to 
amuse, or so sensible while amusing, as has Dr. Mathews. Humor 
and good sense have gone to the making of this volume (" Hours with 
Men and Books"). A book that encourages the love of letters is so 
rare in this country that it is impossible not to be grateful to Dr. 
Mathews for one that is so kindly and attractive. 

"Atlantic Monthly." 

Dr. Mathews appears to have known everybody worth knowing, 
to have seen everything worth seeing, to have read everything worth 
456 



JUDGE STOEY AS A TEACHER 457 

reading, and to have forgotten nothing worth remembering. With- 
out the garb or the rod of the teacher, he allures to the bright realms 
of literature, and leads the way through smooth and delightful paths. 

"New York Tribune." 



Judge Story as a Teacher 

(From " Hours with Men and Books ") 

In the year 1836 the writer entered the Law School at Cam- 
bridge, and saw, for the first time, Judge Story, whose pupil 
he was for some two years to be. Rarely has the physiognomy 
of a distinguished man whose looks we had previously pictured 
to ourself contrasted so strikingly as in this instance with our 
ideal. Instead of a man " severe and stern to view," with an 
awe-inspiring countenance in every hue and lineament of which 
justice was legibly written, and whose whole demeanor mani- 
fested a fearful amount of stiffness, starch, and dignity, — in 
short, an incarnation of law, bristling all over with technicali- 
ties and subtleties, — a walking Coke upon Littleton, — we saw 
before us a sunny, smiling face which bespoke a heart full of 
kindness, and listened to a voice whose musical tones imparted 
interest to everything it communicated, whether dry subtleties 
of the law or reminiscences of the " giants in those days," when 
he was a practitioner at the bar, and of which he was so elo- 
quent a panegyrist. 

Further acquaintance deepened our first impressions; we 
found that he was the counselor, guide, philosopher, and friend 
of all his pupils ; that without the slightest forfeiture of self- 
respect he could chat, jest, and laugh with all ; and that if he 
never looked the Supreme Court judge, or assumed the airs of a 
Sir Oracle, it was simply because he had a real dignity and in- 
ward greatness of soul which rendered it needless that he should 
protect himself from intrusion by any chevaux-de-frise ^ of for- 
malities, — still less by the frizzled, artificial locks, black robes, 
and portentous seals of a British judge, who without the insignia 

' dread-naught cavalry — main dependence 



458 WILLIAM MATHEWS 

of his office would almost despise himself. Overflowing as the 
judge was with legal lore, which bubbled up as from a peren- 
nial fountain, he made no display of learning ; in this matter, 
as in the other, he never led one to suspect the absence of the 
reality by his over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. 
His pupil did not pass many hours in his presence before he 
learned, too, that the same fertile mind that could illumine the 
depths of constitutional law and solve the knottiest and most 
puzzling problems of commercial jurisprudence could also en- 
liven the monotony of recitation by a keen witticism or a spark- 
ling pun. Though thirty years and more have elapsed since 
the time of which we speak, we can yet see him in fancy as 
plainly as we see his portrait hanging before us. It is two 
o'clock, P.M. ; he walks briskly into the recitation-room, his face 
wreathed with smiles, and, laying down his white hat, takes 
his seat at the table, puts on his spectacles, and, with a semi- 
quizzical look, inquires as he glances about the room : 

" Where do I begin to-day ? Ah ! Mr. L , I believe you 

dodged out, yesterday, just before I reached you ; so we'll begin 
with you." 

This sally provokes a laugh, in which the judge joins as 
heartily as the students ; and then begins perhaps an examina- 
tion in " Long on Sales," a brief treatise, which suggests the 
remark that " Long is short, and short because he is Long ; a 
writer who can condense into a small book what others would 
spin out into volumes." 

Probably no two teachers of equal ability were ever associ- 
ated who were more unlike in the constitution of their minds, 
and who conducted a recitation in modes more dissimilar, than 
Judge Story and Professor Greenleaf. The latter, the beau 
ideal ^ of a lawyer in his physique, was severe and searching in 
the class-room, probing the student to the quick, accepting no 
half answers or vague general statements for accurate replies ; 
showing no mercy to laziness ; and when he commented on the 

' a conception or image of consummate beauty, formed in the mind, free from 
all the deformities, defects, and blemishes which nature exhibits 



JUDGE STORY AS A TEACHEE 459 

text, it was always in the fewest, pithiest words that would con- 
vey the ideas. Language in his mouth seemed to have pro- 
claimed a sumptuary law, forbidding that it should in any 
case overstep the limits of the thought. Indolent students who 
had skimmed over the lesson dreaded his scrutiny, for they 
knew that an examination by him was a literal weighing of 
their knowledge — that they could impose on him by no shams. 
Judge Story's /orfe, on the other hand, was in lecturing, not in 
questioning ; in the communication of information, not in ascer- 
taining the exact sum of the pupil's knowledge. In most cases 
his questions were put in such a way as to suggest the answer. 
For example, having stated two modes of legal proceeding 
under certain circumstances, he would ask the student : 

"Would you adopt the former course, or would you rather 
adopt the latter ? " 

" I would rather adopt the latter," the student would reply, 
who perhaps had not looked at the lesson, 

" You are right," would be the comment of the kind-hearted 
Dane professor ; " Lord Mansfield himself could not have 
answered more correctly." Whether he was too good-natured 
to put the student on the rack, or thought the time might be 
more profitably spent, we know not ; but no one feared to re- 
cite because he was utterly ignorant of the lesson. 

The manner of the judge, when lecturing, was that of an 
enthusiast rather than of a professional teaicher. The recita- 
tion — if recitation it could be called, where the professor was 
questioned on many days nearly as often as the student — was 
not confined to the text-book ; but everything that could throw 
light on the subject in hand — all the limitations or modifica- 
tions of the principles laid down by the author — were fully 
stated and illustrated by numerous apt examples. The book 
was merely the starting point whence excursions were made 
into all the cognate provinces of the law, from which the opima 
spolia ' of a keen and searching intellect and a capacious mem- 
ory could be gathered. His readiness of invention, as his son 

1 the richest booty 



460 WILLIAM MATHEWS 

has remarked in the biography of his father, was particularly 
exhibited in the facility and exhaustless ingenuity with which 
he supplied fictitious cases to illustrate a principle, and shaped 
the circumstances so as to expose and make prominent the vari- 
ous exceptions to which it was subject. Often his illustrations 
were drawn from incidents of the day, and the listless student 
whose ears had been pricked up by some amusing tale or anec- 
dote, found that all this was but the gilding of the pill, and 
that he had been cheated into swallowing a large dose of legal 
wisdom. Thus " he attracted the mind along, instead of driv- 
ing it. Alive himself, he made the law alive. His lectures 
were not bundles of dried fagots, but budding scions. Like the 
Chinese juggler, he planted the seed, and made it grow before 
the eyes of his pupils into a tree." 

Few men have ever been less subject to moods. He had no 
fits of enthusiasm. Of those alternations of mental sunshine 
and gloom — of buoyancy and depression — to which most men, 
and especially men of genius, are subject, he seemed to know 
nothing. Nor did he, even when most overwhelmed with work, 
manifest any sense of weariness. After having tried a tedious 
and intricate case in the United States Court-room in Boston, he 
was as fresh, elastic, and vivacious in the recitation room as if 
he had taken a mountain walk or some other bracing exercise. 
He had that rare gift, the faculty of communicating; and loved, 
above all things else, to communicate knowledge. The one rul- 
ing passion of his mind was what the French writer calls " un 
gout dominant d^instruire et documenter quelquhm." ^ Few men with 
equal stores of learning have had a more perfect command of 
their acquisitions. All his knowledge, whether gathered from 
musty black-letter folios or from modern octavos, was at the tip 
of his tongue. He had no unsmelted gold or bullion, but kept 
his intellectual riches in the form of current coin, as negotiable 
as it was valuable. His extraordinary fluency, his vast acquire- 
ments, his sympathy with the young, and especially his per- 
sonal magnetism, eminently fitted him to be a teacher. To 
' a ruling desire to instruct and to document somebody 



JUDGE STORY AS A TEACHER .461 

smooth the pathway of the legal learner, to give a clew by 
which to thread the labyrinths of jurisprudence, to hold a torch 
by which to light his way through its dark passages — above all, 
to kindle in his breast some of his own ever-burning enthusi- 
asm — was to the judge a constant joy. We doubt if ever a dull 
hour was known in his lecture-room. His perennial liveliness ; 
his frankness and abandon ; his " winning smile, that played 
lambent as heat-lightning around his varying countenance ; " 
his bubbling humor ; his contagious, merry and irresistible 
laugh ; his exhaustless fund of incident and anecdote, with 
which he never failed to give piquancy and zest to the driest 
and most crabbed themes — all won not only the attention, but 
the love of his pupils, and he who could have yawned amid 
such stimulants to attention, must have been dull indeed. Only 
a dunce or a beatified intelligence could listen uninterested to 
such a teacher. 

Judge Story was fond of telling that Mr. Webster, on one or 
two occasions, after grumbling at a legal decision of the former, 
had afterwards the magnanimity to acknowledge that he was 
wrong. We are sure that when the judge himself was in error, 
he was frank, on discovering it, to avow the fact. One day in 
the Moot Court, as a student, arguing a case before him, said : 
" My next authority will be one which Your Honor will not be 
disposed to question — a decision by Mr. Justice Story, of the 
United States Supreme Court — " " I beg your j)ardon," said 
the judge, bowing, " but that opinion by Mr. Justice Story is 
not law." 

It was well observed by Charles Sumner, in his eulogy of 
Judge Story, that any just estimate of the man and his works 
must have regard to his three different characters — as a judge, 
as an author, and as a teacher. When we look at his books 
only, we are astonished at his colossal industry : it seems al- 
most incredible that a single mind, in a single life, should have 
been able to accomplish so much. His written judgments on 
his own circuit, and his various commentaries, occupy twenty- 
seven volumes, and his judgments in the Supreme Court of the 



462 WILLIAM MATHEWS 

United States form an important part of thirty-four volumes. 
Rightly does Mr. Sumner characterize him as the Lope de Vega, 
or the Walter Scott, of the Common Law. With far more truth 
might it be said of him, than was said by Dryden of one of the 
greatest British lawyers : 

" Our law, that did a boundless ocean seem, 
Was coasted all, and fathomed all by him." 

Besides all his legal labors he delivered many discourses on 
literary and scientific subjects, wrote many biographical sketches 
of his contemporaries, elaborated reviews for the North Ameri- 
can, drew up learned memorials to Congress, made long speeches 
in the Massachusetts Legislature, contributed largely to the " En- 
cyclopaedia Americana," prepared Reports on Codification, etc., 
and drafted some of the most important Acts of Congress. The 
secret of these vast achievements was ceaseless, methodical in- 
dustry, frequent change of labor, and concentration of mind. 
He economized odd moments, bits and fragments of time, never 
overworked, and, when he worked, concentrated upon the sub- 
ject all the powers of his intellect. Add to this that his knowl- 
edge did not lie in undigested heaps in his mind, but was 
thoroughly assimilated, so as to become a part of his mental 
constitution. His brain was a vast repository of legal facts and 
principles, each one of which had its cell or pigeon-hole, from 
which it was always forthcoming whenever it was wanted. 

No other American lawyer or jurist has so wide-spread a 
European fame. His legal works, republished in England, are 
recognized as of the highest authority in all the courts of that 
country; and his " Conflict of Laws" — embodying the essence 
of all similar works, as well as the fruits of his own deep think- 
ing — a work of enormous labor upon a most intricate and 
perplexing theme — has been translated into many European 
languages, and is cited as the most inexhaustible discussion of 
the subject. Yet — such is faine — this man, whose name has 
crossed the Atlantic, and was on the lips of the most profound 
jurists of the Old World, had comparatively little reputation 



JUDGE STOUT AS A TEACHER 463 

in his lifetime among his own countrymen. Men immeasura- 
bly inferior to him, intellectually and morally, overshadowed 
him in the public mind. And yet no man was more suscepti- 
ble to merited praise than he. While he despised flattery and 
could detect the least taint of it with the quickness of an instinct, 
his heart was yet as fresh and tender as a child's, and he felt 
neglect as keenly as the bud the frost. Not soon shall we for- 
get the good humor, mingled with a sensibility that could not 
be concealed, with which he told the following story of himself, 
illustrating the saying that " a prophet is not without honor, 
save in his own country " : 

" One day I was called suddenly to Boston to attend to some 
business matters, and on my way thither I discovered that I had 
forgotten my pocket-book. It was too late to return, and so, 
when the omnibus halted at the Port (Cambridgeport, half way 
between Old Cambridge, the judge's residence, and Boston), I 
ran hastily into the neighboring bank, and asked to be accom- 
modated with a hundred dollars. The cashier stared at me as 
if he thought me insane ; but I noticed that he particularly 
scrutinized my feet ; and then he coldly informed me that he 
had not the pleasure of recognizing me. I immediately told 
him my name, supposing that it might have reached, at least, 
the limits of my own place of residence. He still kept his eyes 
upon my feet, and finally, as I was about to leave, more cha- 
grined than disappointed, he requested me to step back, add- 
ing that he would be pleased to accommodate me. Upon my 
inquiring the reason of his delay, he replied : ' Sir, I have never 
heard your name before, but I know you must be a gentleman, 
from the looks of your boots.' " The unction and perfect good 
humor with which the judge told this anecdote, and the joyous 
laugh with which he concluded it — aside from the absurdity 
that such a man should be judged of by the material under- 
standing—were irresistible. We need not add that his pupils 
laughed, as Falstaff says, "without intervellums " — till their 
faces were " like a wet cloak ill laid up." 

We doubt if any teacher ever loved his pupils more deeply, 



464 WILLIAM MATHEWS 

or was more universally loved by them, than the subject of this 
article. In the success of his " boys," as he called them, both 
at the school and in their after life, he felt a profound interest ; 
their triumphs were his triumphs, and their failures caused him 
the keenest pain. The tact with which he adapted himself to 
the various temperaments and idiosyncrasies of his pupils, and 
the patience with which he bore any one's dullness, were also 
remarkable. We remember that one day a somewhat eccentric 
and outspoken student from Tennessee came to the judge in 
the library of the Law School, and, holding up an old folio, 
said: "Judge, what do you understand by this here rule in 
Shelley's Case? I've been studying it three days, and can't 
make anything out of it." " Shelley's Case ! Shelley's Case ! " 
exclaimed the judge, with a look of astonishment as he took 
the volume and held it up before his eyes. " Do you expect to 
understand that in three days ? Why, it took me three weeks ! " 

Within the lifetime of Judge Story, a volume of " Miscel- 
lanies " from his pen was published, containing his literary 
orations, contributions to reviews, and his beautiful address at 
the consecration of Mount Auburn Cemetery. There, under 
the trees that overshadow the lovely dell in which he spoke, 
lie his remains ; and in the chapel, near the entrance to this 
home of the dead, stands a marble statue of the great jurist, 
executed by his son, W. W. Story, the sculptor and poet, — an 
exquisite work of art, in which all the characteristic qualities 
of the original are idealized, yet most faithfully reproduced and 
preserved. 



GEORGE ELIOT 

1S19-1880 

George Eliot was the nom de plume assumed by Mary Ann Evans, 
one of the gi-eatest novelists of our times. She was born at Arbury 
Farm, in the parish of Colton, Warwickshire, in 1819. Her father was 
Robert Evans, a carpenter, whose character is portrayed with more or 
less truth in the person of Adam Bede. At an early age she attended 
the village free school, and in 1828 she was sent to a boarding-school 
at Nuneaton. In 1832 she attended a school at Coventry, where she 
remained until December, 1835. Shortly after her return from school, 
in 1836, her mother died, and she assumed the care of her father's 
household. In 1841 they removed to Coventry, where she made the 
acquaintance of the family of Charles Bray, with whom she became 
very intimate. This connection had a marked effect upon her religious 
opinions, and led to an abandonment of her orthodox views. At about 
this time she began her literary work by a translation of Strauss's 
"Life of Jesus." 

In 1849 her father died, and soon afterwards she went abroad. Upon 
her return to England, in 1850, she became assistant editor of the West- 
TTiinster Revietv. She now found herself in the center of a large liter- 
ary cii'cle which included George Henry Lewes, with whom she fell 
in love. In 1854 she entered into a connection with Mr. Lewes, which 
was in every sense a marriage, though without legal sanction. 

In 1856, urged by Mr. Lewes, she wrote her first novel, "Amos Bar- 
ton," which, included in the "Scenes of Clerical Life," was published 
in Blackwood's Magazine. This was followed by "Adam Bede," the 
success of which was unprecedented. 

From this time to the year of her death George Eliot wrote indefati- 
gably, and she has contributed some of the finest novels to be found 
in English literature. 

In 1878, Mr. Lewes died. In April, 1880, George Eliot married Mr. 
John Walter Cross, but their married life was of brief duration, as 
she died in December of the same year. 

Her most important writings are: "Adam Bede;" "The Mill on 
the Floss; " " Silas Marner; " " Romola; " " Felix Holt, the Radical; " 
" Middlemarch ; " "Daniel Deronda;" "Scenes from Clerical Life;" 
" The Spanish Gypsy; " "The Legend of Jubal," and " Theophrastus 
Such." 

s. M.— 30 465 



466 GEOBQE ELIOT 



Characterization 

It is at this point that we touch the secret spring' of G-eorge Eliot's 
art: her whole work is imbued with ethical notions. The novel is, 
no less than the poem, a criticism of life; and the remarkable influ- 
ence of George Eliot's novels has been mainly due to the consistent 
application of moral ideas to the problems set by each novel. Their 
stimulative effect was due to the fact that her ethical views were in 
consonance with some of the most advanced ideas of the age. The 
three chief principles which dominated her thinking were the reign of 
law in human affairs, the solidarity of society, and the constitution of 
society as incarnate history (the phrase is Riehl's). Flowing fi'om 
these were the ethical laws which rule the world of her novels, the 
principle summed up in Novalis's words, "Character is Fate," the 
radiation of good and evil deeds throughout society, and the supreme 
claims of family or race. Add to these the scientific tone of impar- 
tiality, with its moral analogue, the extension of sympathy to all, and 
we have exhausted the idees meres of George Eliot's ethical system, 
which differentiates her novels from all others of the age. 

Joseph Jacobs. 

There can be no doubt that George Eliot touched the highest point 
which, in a woman, has been reached in our literature. . . . The 
remarkable thing about George Eliot's genius is that though there is 
nothing at all unfeminine in it — if we except a certain touch of scien- 
tific pedantry which is not pedantry in motive^ but due only to a rather 
awkward manipulation of somewhat unfeminine learning — its great- 
est qualities are not the least the qualities in which women have 
usually surpassed men, but rather the qualities in which, till George 
Eliot's time, women had always been notably deficient. Largeness of 
mind, largeness of conception, was her first characteristic, as regards 
both matters of reason and matters of imagination. . . . Her own 
nature was evidently sedate and rather slow-moving, with a touch of 
Miltonic stateliness in it, and a love of elaboration at times even injuri- 
ous to her g^enius. Yet no characters she ever drew were more power- 
ful than those at the very opposite pole to her own. . . . Her 
g-reatest stories lose in form by their too wide reflectiveness, and espe- 
cially by an engrafted mood of artificial reflectiveness not suitable 
to her genius. . . . No novelist, however, in the whole series of 
English novelists, has combined so much power of painting external 
life on a broad canvas with so wonderful an insight into the life of 
the soul. 

"Spectator." 



THE maHT-SGHOOL AND TEE 8GE00LMA8TEB 467 

The Night-SchooI and the Schoolmaster 

(From " Adam Bede ") 

Bartle Massey's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge 
of a common which was divided by the road to Treddleston. 
Adam reached it in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall 
Farm ; and when he had his hand on the door latch, he could 
see, through the curtainless window, that there were eight or 
nine heads bending over the desks, lighted by thin dips. 

When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward, and 
Bartle Massey merely nodded, leaving him to take his place 
where he pleased. He had not come for the sake of a lesson 
to-night, and his mind was too full of personal matters, too full 
of the first two hours he had passed in Hetty's presence, for him 
to amuse himself with a book till school was over ; so he sat 
down in a corner, and looked on with an absent mind. It was 
a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for 
years ; he knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed 
specimen of Bartle Massey's handwriting which hung over the 
schoolmaster's head, by way of keeping a lofty ideal before the 
minds of his pupils ; he knew the backs of all the books on 
the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above the pegs 
for the slates ; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out 
of the ear of Indian-corn that hung from one of the rafters ; he 
had long ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in 
trying to think how the bunch of feathery seaweed had looked 
and grown in its native element ; and from the place where he 
sat he could make nothing of the old map of England that 
hung against the opposite wall, for age had turned it of a fine 
yellow-brown, something like that of a well-seasoned meer- 
schaum. The drama that was going on was almost as familiar 
as the scene ; nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent 
to it, and even in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a 
momentary stirring of the old fellow-feeling as he looked at the 
rough men painfully holding pen or pencil with their cramped 
hands, or humbly laboring through their reading lesson. 



468 GEORGE ELIOT 

The reading class now seated on the form in front of the 
schoolmaster's desk, consisted of the three most backward 
pupils. Adam would have known it, only by seeing Bartle 
Massey's face as he looked over his spectacles, which he had 
shifted to the ridge of his nose, not requiring them for present 
purposes. The face wore its mildest expression; the grizzled 
bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of com- 
passionate kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with 
a pout of the lower lip, was relaxed so as to be able to speak a 
hopeful word or syllable in a moment. This gentle expression 
was the more interesting because the schoolmaster's nose, an 
irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side, had rather a for- 
midable character; and his brow, moreover, had that peculiar 
tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen impa- 
tient temperament; the blue veins stood out like cords under 
the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was 
softened by no tendency to baldness, for the gray bristly hair, 
cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close 
ranks as ever. 

" Nay, Bill, nay," Bartle was saying, in a kind tone, as he 
nodded to Adam, " begin that again, and then, perhaps, it'll 
come to you what d, r, y, spells. It's the same lesson you read 
last week, you know." 

" Bill " was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent 
stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the 
trade of his years ; but he found a reading lesson in words of 
one syllable a harder matter to deal with than the hardest 
stone he had ever had to saw. The letters, he complained, 
were so " uncommon alike, there was no tellin' 'em one from 
another," the sawyer's business not being concerned with min- 
ute differences such as exist between a letter with its tail turned 
up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had a firm 
determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on 
two reasons : first, that Tom Hazel ow, his cousin, could read 
anything " right off," whether it was print or writing, and Tom 
had sent him a letter from twenty miles off, saying how he was 



THE NIGHT-SCHOOL AND THE SCHOOLMASTER -469 

prospering in the world, and had got an overlooker's place ; 
secondly, that Sam Philips, who sawed with him, had learned 
to read when he was turned twenty ; and what could be done 
by a little fellow like Sam Philips, Bill considered, could be 
done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay 
if circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big 
finger toward three words at once, and turning his head on one 
side that he might keep better hold with his eye of the one word 
which was to be discriminated out of the group. The amount 
of knowledge Bartle Massey must possess was something so dim 
and vast that Bill's imagination recoiled before it; he would 
hardly have ventured to deny that the schoolmaster might 
have something to do in bringing about the regular return of 
daylight and the changes in the weather. 

The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type ; he 
was a Methodist brickmaker, who, after spending thirty years 
of his life in perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately 
" got religion," and along with it the desire to read the Bible. 
But with him, too, learning was a heavy business, and on his 
way out to-night he had offered as usual a special prayer for 
help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard task with a 
single eye to the nourishment of his soul — that he might have 
a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish 
evil memories and the temptations of old habits ; or, in brief 
language, the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious 
poacher, and was suspected, though there was no good evidence 
against him, of being the man who had shot a neighboring 
gamekeeper in the leg. However that might be, it is certain 
that shortly after the accident referred to, which was coinci- 
dent with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher at 
Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brick- 
maker ; and though he was still known in the neighborhood by 
his old sobriquet of " Brimstone," there was nothing he held in 
so much horror as any farther transactions with that evil- 
smelling element. He was a broad-chested fellow with a fervid 
temperament, which helped him better in imbibing religious 



470 GEORGE ELIOT 

ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere" human 
knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a 
little shaken in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who 
assured him that the letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, 
and expressed a fear that Brimstone was too eager for the 
knowledge that puffeth up. 

The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He 
was a tall but thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, 
with a very pale face, and hands stained a deep blue. He was 
a dyer, who, in the course of dipping home-spun wool and old 
women's petticoats, had got fired with the ambition to learn a 
great deal more about the strange secrets of color. He had 
already a high reputation in the district for his dyes, and he 
was bent on discovering some method by which he could 
reduce the expense of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at 
Treddleston had given him a notion that he might save himself 
a great deal of labor and expense if he could learn to read, and 
so he had begun to give his spare hours to the night-school, 
resolving that his " little chap " should lose no time in coming 
to Mr. Massey's day-school as soon as he was old enough. 

It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of 
their hard labor upon them, anxiously bending over the worn 
books, and painfully making out, " The grass is green," " The 
sticks are dry," " The corn is ripe " — a very hard lesson to pass 
to after columns of single words all alike except in the first 
letter. It was almost as if three rough animals were making 
humble efforts to learn how they might become human. And 
it touched the tenderest fiber in Bartle Massey's nature, for 
such full-grown children as these were the only pupils for 
whom he had no severe epithets, and no impatient tones. He 
was not gifted with an imperturbable temper, and on music 
nights it was apparent that patience could never be an easy 
virtue to him ; but this evening, as he glances over his spec- 
tacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his head on 
one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters, 
d, r, y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light. 



TEE mGHT-SGHOOL AND THE SCHOOLMASTER 471 

After the reading class, two youths, between sixteen and 
nineteen, came up with imaginary bills of parcels, which they 
had been writing out on their slates, and were now required 
to calculate " off-hand " — a test which they stood with such 
imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes had been 
glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some 
minutes, at length burst out in a bitter high-pitched tone, 
pausing between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed 
stick which rested between his legs. 

" Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you 
did a fortnight ago ; and I'll tell you what's the reason. You 
want to learn accounts ; that's well and good. But you think 
all you need do to learn accounts is to come to me and do sums 
for an hour or so, two or three times a week ; and no sooner do 
you get your caps on and turn out of doors again, than you 
sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You go 
whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of 
than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill 
through that happened to be in the way ; and if you get a good 
notion in 'em, it's pretty soon washed out again. You think 
knowledge is to be got cheap — you'll come and pay Bartle 
Massey sixpence a week, and he'll make you clever at figures 
without your taking any trouble. But knowledge isn't to be 
got by paying sixpence, let me tell you; if you're to know 
figures, you must turn 'em over in your own heads, and keep 
your thoughts On 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a 
sum, for there's nothing but what's got number in it — even a 
fool. You may say to yourselves, ' I'm one fool and Jack's 
another ; if my fool's head weighed four pound, and Jack's 
three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many penny- 
weights heavier would my head be than Jack's ? A man that 
has got his heart in learning figures would make sums for him- 
self, and work 'em in his head ; when he sat at his shoemaking, 
he'd count his stitches by fives, and then put a price on his 
stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he 
could get in an hour j and then ask himself how much money 



472 GEORGE ELIOT 

he'd get in a clay at that rate; and then how much ten work- 
men would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at 
that rate^and all the while his needle would be going just as 
fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But 
the long and the short of it is — I'll have nobody in my night- 
school that doesn't strive to learn what he came to learn, as 
hard as if he was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad 
daylight. I'll send no man away because he is stupid ; if Billy 
Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not refuse to teach 
him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who 
think the}^ can get it by the sixj^enn'orth, and carry it away 
with them as the}^ would an ounce of snuff. So never come to 
me again, if you can't show that you have been working with 
your own heads, instead of thinking you can pay mine to work 
for you. That's the last word I've got to say to'you." 

With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a sharper rap 
than ever with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got 
up with a sulky look. 

Tom's " First Half" 

(From " The Mill on the Floss ") 

Tom Tulliver's sufferings during the first quarter he was at 
King's Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter 
Stelling, were rather severe. At Mr. Jacobs's academy, life had 
not presented itself to him as a difficult problem : there were 
plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom being good at all 
active games — fighting especially — had that precedence among 
them which apj)eared to him inseparable from the j^ersonality 
of Tom Tulliver. Mr. Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old 
Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no pain- 
ful awe; and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites 
like him to write like copper-plate and surround their signatures 
with arabesques, to spell without forethought, and to spout " My 
Name is Norval" without bungling, Tom, for his part, was 



TOM'S "FIRST HALF'' 473 

rather glad he was not in danger of those mean accomplish- 
ments. 

He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster — he ; but a 
substantial man like his father, who used to go hunting when 
he was younger, and rode a capital black mare — as pretty a 
bit of horse-flesh as ever you saw. Tom had heard what her 
points were a hundred times. He meant to go hunting too, 
and to be generally respected. When people were growing up, 
he considered, nobody inquired about their writing and spell- 
ing ; when he was a man, he should be master of everything 
and do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for him to 
reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time was to be pro- 
longed, and that he was not to be brought up to his father's 
business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant, for 
it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to 
market ; and he thought that a clergyman would give him a 
great many Scripture lessons, and probably make him learn 
the Gospel and Epistle on a Sunday, as well as the Collect. 

But in the absence of specific information it was impossible for 
him to imagine that school and a schoolmaster would be some- 
thing entirely different from the academy of Mr. Jacobs. So, not 
to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial companions, 
he had taken care to carry with him a small box of percussion 
caps ; not that there was anything particular to be done with 
them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a 
sense of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though 
he saw very clearly through Maggie's illusions, was not without 
illusions of his own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his 
enlarged experience at King's Lorton. 

He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident that 
life, comj^licated not only with the Latin grammar, but with a 
new standard of English pronunciation, . was a very difficult 
business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashful- 
ness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception 
among boys for ease of address ; but the difficulty of enunciat- 
ing a monosyllable in reply to Mr. and Mrs. Stelling was so 



474 GEORGE ELIOT 

great, that he even dreaded to be asked at the table whether 
he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he 
had almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he 
would throw them into a neighboring pond ; for not only was 
he the solitary pupil, but he began to have a certain skepti- 
cism about guns, and a general sense that his theory of life 
was undermined. For Mr. Stelling thought nothing of guns, 
or horses either, apparently ; and yet it was impossible for Tom 
to despise Mr. Stelling as he had despised Old Goggles. If there 
was anything that was not thoroughly genuine about Mr. Stell- 
ing, it lay quite beyond Tom's power to detect it ; it is only by 
a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can 
distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder. 

Mr. Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet 
thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-gray 
eyes, which were always very wide open ; he had a sonorous 
bass voice, and an air of defiant self-confidence inclining to 
brazenness. He had entered on his career with great vigor, 
and intended to make a considerable impression on his fellow- 
men. The Rev. Walter Stelling was not a man who would 
remain among the " inferior clergy " all his life. He had a 
true British determination to push his way in the world. As 
a schoolmaster, in the first place ; for there were capital master- 
ships of grammar-schools to be had, and Mr. Stelling meant 
to have one of them. But as a preacher also, for he meant 
always to preach in a striking manner, so as to have his con- 
gregation swelled by admirers from neighboring parishes, and 
to produce a great sensation whenever he took occasional duty 
for a brother clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preach- 
ing he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was held 
little short of the miraculous in rural parishes like King's Lor- 
ton. Some passages, of Massillon and Bourdaloue, which he 
knew by heart, were really very effective when rolled out in 
Mr. Stelling's deepest tones ; but as comparatively feeble appeals 
of his own were delivered in the same manner, they were often 
thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr. Stelling's doc- 



TOM'S ''FIRST HALF'' 475 

trine was of no particular school ; if anything, it had a tinge 
of evangelicalism, for that was " the telling thing " just then in 
the diocese to which King's Lorton belonged. 

In short, Mr. Stelling was a man who meant to rise in his 
profession, and to rise by merit, clearly, since he had no inter- 
est beyond what might be promised by a problematic relation- 
ship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord Chancel- 
lor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally 
gets a little into debt at starting ; it is not to be expected that 
he will live in the style of a man who means to be a poor 
curate all his life, and if the few hundreds Mr. Timpson ad- 
vanced toward his daughter's fortune did not suffice for the 
purchase of handsome furniture, together with a stock of wine, 
a grand f)iano, and the laying out of a superior flower-garden, 
it followed in the most rigorous manner, either that these things 
must be procured by some other means, or else that the Rev. 
Mr. Stelling must go without them — which last alternative 
would be an absurd procrastination of the fruits of success, 
where success was certain. 

Mr. Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt 
equal to anything ; he would become celebrated by shaking 
the consciences of his hearers, and he would by-and-by edit a 
Greek play, and invent several new readings. He had not yet 
selected the play, for having been married little more than two 
years, his leisure time had been much occupied with attentions 
to Mrs. Stelling ; but he had told that fine woman what he 
meant to do some day, and she felt great confidence in her hus- 
band, as a man who understood everything of that sort. 

But the immediate step to future success was to bring on 
Tom Tulliver during this first half-year ; for, by a singular co- 
incidence, there had been some negotiation concerning another 
pupil from the same neighborhood, and it might further a deci- 
sion in Mr. Stelling's favor, if it were understood that young 
Tulliver, who, Mr. Stelling observed in conjugal privacy, was 
rather a rough cub, had made prodigious progress in a short 
time. It was on this ground that he was severe with Tom 



476 . GEORGE ELIOT 

about his lessons : he was clearly a boy whose powers would 
never be developed through the medium of the Latin gram- 
mar, without the application of some sternness. Not that Mr. 
Stelling was a harsh-tempered or unkind man — quite the con- 
trary ; he was jocose with Tom at table, and corrected his pro- 
vincialisms and his deportment in the most playful manner; 
but poor Tom was only the more cowed and confused by this 
double novelty, for he had never been used to jokes at all like 
Mr. Stelling's; and for the first time in his life he had a j^ain- 
ful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr. Stelling 
said, as the roast-beef was being uncovered, " Now, Tulliver ! 
which would you rather decline, roast-beef, or the Latin for 
it?" — Tom, to whom in his coolest moment a pun would have 
been a hard nut, was thrown into a state of embarrassed alarm 
that made everything dim to him except the feeling that he 
would rather not have anything to do with Latin ; of course 
he answered, " Roast-beef," whereupon there followed much 
laughter and some practical joking with the plates, from which 
T^m gathered that he had in some mysterious way refused 
beef, and, in fact, made himself appear " a silly." 

If he could have seen a fellow-pupil undergo these painful 
operations and survive them in good spirits, he might sooner 
have taken them as a matter of course. But there are two 
expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may 
procure for his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a 
clergyman : one is, the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's 
undivided neglect ; the other is, the endurance of the reverend 
gentleman's undivided attention. It was the latter privilege 
for which Mr. Tulliver paid a high price in Tom's initiatory 
months at King's Lorton. 

That respectable miller and malster had left Tom behind, 
and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. 
He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he 
had thought of asking Riley's advice about a tutor for Tom. 
Mr. Stelling's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such 
an off-hand, matter-of-fact way — answering every difficult slow 



TOM'S ''FIRST balf:' 477 

remark of Mr. Tulliver's with, " I see, my good sir, I see ; " " To 
be sure, to be sure ; " " You want your son to be a man who 
will make his way in the world," — that Mr. Tulliver was de- 
lighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so 
applicable to the every-day affairs of this life. Except Coun- 
selor Wylde, whom he had heard at the last sessions, Mr. Tul- 
liver thought the Rev. Mr. Stelling was the shrewdest fellow he 
had ever met with — not unlike Wylde, in fact ; he had the 
same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waist- 
coat. Mr. Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mis- 
taking brazenness for shrewdness : most laymen thought Stell- 
ing shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers generally ; it was 
chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather 
a dull fellow. But he told Mr. Tulliver several stories about 
" Swing " and incendiarism, and asked his advice about feeding 
pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a manner, with so 
much polished glibness of tongue, that the miller thought here 
was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt this 
first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, 
and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become 
a match for the lawyers — which poor Mr. Tulliver himself 
did not know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction 
on this wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at 
him, for I have known much more highly instructed persons 
than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at all wiser. 

As for Mrs. Tulliver— finding that Mrs. Stelling's views as to 
the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a 
growing boy, entirely coincided with her own ; moreover, that 
Mrs. Stelling, though so young a woman, and only anticipating 
her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the same 
experience as herself with regard to the behavior and funda- 
mental character of the monthly nurse — she expressed great 
contentment to her husband, when they drove away, at leav- 
ing Tom with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed 
quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as 
could be. 



478 GEORGE ELIOT 

" They must be very well off, though," said Mrs. Tulliver, 
" for everything's as nice as can be all over the house, and that 
watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Pullet has 
got one like it." 

" Ah," said Mr. Tulliver, " he's got some income besides the 
curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father allows 'em something. 
There's Tom 'ull be another hundred to him, and not much 
trouble either, by his own account ; he says teaching comes 
natural to him. That's wonderful, now," added Mr. Tulliver, 
turning his head on one side, and giving his horse a meditative 
tickling on the flank. 

Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr. Stell- 
ing, that^ he set about it with that uniformity of method and 
independence of circumstances which distinguish the actions 
of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching 
of nature. Mr. Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charming 
naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in constructing 
a dam, in a room up three pairs of stairs in London, as if he 
had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper 
Canada. It was " Binny's " function to build : the absence of 
water or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was not 
accountable. With the same unerring instinct Mr. Stelling set 
to work at his natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar 
and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he consid- 
ered, was the only basis of solid instruction : all other means of 
education were mere charlatanism, and could produce nothing 
better than smatterers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might 
observe the display of various or special knowledge made by 
irregularly educated people, with a pitying smile ; all that sort 
of thing was very well, but it was impossible these people could 
form sound opinions. 

In holding this conviction Mr. Stelling was not biased, as 
some tutors have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of 
his own scholarship ; and as to his views about Euclid, no 
opinion could have been freer from personal partiality. Mr. 
Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, 



TOM'S ''FIB8T HALF'' ^79 

either religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had no 
secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion 
was a very excellent thing and Aristotle a great authority, and 
deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain 
the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the 
unseen a great support to afflicted minds : he believed in all 
these things as the Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of 
the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic 
visitors. And in the same way Mr. Stelling believed in his 
method of education ; he had no doubt that he was doing the 
very best thing for Mr. Tulliver's boy. Of course, when the 
miller talked of " mapping " and " summing " in a vague and 
diffident manner, Mr. Stelling had set his mind at rest by an 
assurance that he understood what was wanted; for how was it 
possible the good man could form any reasonable judgment 
about the matter ? Mr. Stelling's duty was to teach the lad in 
the only right way — indeed, he knew no other; he had not 
wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal. 

He very soon set dovvn poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid lad; 
for though by hard labor he could get particular declensions 
into his brain, anything so abstract as the relation between 
cases and terminations could by no means get such a lodgment 
there as to enable him to recognize a chance genitive or dative. 
This struck Mr. Stelling as something more than natural stu- 
pidity ; he suspected obstinacy, or at any rate, indifference, and 
lectured Tom severely on his want of thorough application. 
" You feel no interest in what you're doing, sir," Mr. Stelling 
would say, and the reproach was painfully true. Tom had 
never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, 
when once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive 
powers were not at all deficient. 

I fancy they were quite as strong as those of the Rev. Mr. 
Stelling ; for Tom could predict with accuracy what number of 
horses were cantering behind him ; he could throw a stone right 
into the center of a given ripple ; he could guess to a fraction 
how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the 



480 GEORGE ELIOT 

playground, and could draw almost j^erfect squares on his slate 
without any measurement. But Mr. Stelling took no note of 
these things ; he only observed that Tom's faculties failed him 
before the abstractions hideously symbolized to him in the pages 
of the Eton Grammar, and that he was in a state bordering on 
idiocy with regard to the demonstration that two given triangles 
must be equal — though he could discern with great prompti- 
tude and certainty the fact that they were equal. Whence Stell- 
ing concluded that Tom's brain, being peculiarly impervious to 
etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being 
ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements. It was his 
favorite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted 
that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of 
any subsequent crop. 

I say nothing against Mr. Stelling's theory : if we are to have 
one regimen for all minds, his seems to be as good as any other. 
I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom Tulliver 
as if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric 
weakness which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonish- 
ing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor ! 
Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenious 
conception of the classics and geometry as plows and harrows 
seems to settle nothing. But then it is open to some one else to 
follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet of white 
paper or a mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the diges- 
tive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an inge- 
nious idea to call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would 
hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O Aristotle ! 
if you had had the advantage of being " the freshest modern " 
instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled 
your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelli- 
gence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself 
in speech without metaphor — that we can so seldom declare 
what a thing is, except by saying it is something else. 

Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not 
use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin : 



TOM'S "FIRST HALF''> 481 

he never called it an instrument of torture ; and it was not until 
he had got on some way in the next half year, and in the 
Delectus, that he was advanced enough to call it a " bore " and 
" beastly stuff." At present, in relation to this demand that he 
should learn Latin declensions and conjugations, Tom was in a 
state of as blank unimaginativeness concerning the cause and 
tendency of his sufferings as if he had been an innocent shrew- 
mouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash tree, in order to 
cure lameness in cattle. 

It is doubtless almost incredible to instructed minds of the 
present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging strictly to " the 
masses," who are now understood to have the monopoly of 
mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how there 
came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth ; yet so it was 
with Tom. It would have taken a long while to make conceiv- 
able to him that there ever existed a people who bought and 
sold sheep and oxen, and transacted the every-day affairs of life, 
through the medium of this language, and still longer to make 
him understand why he should be called upon to learn it, when 
its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent. So 
far as Tom had gained any acquaintance with the Romans at 
Mr. Jacob's academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, but it 
went no farther than the fact that they were " in the New 
Testament ; " and Mr. Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and 
emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or 
to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smat- 
tering, extraneous information, such as is given to girls. 

Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Tom be- 
came more like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. 
He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself 
very comfortable in the world, despising Old Goggles, and repos- 
ing in the sense of unquestioned rights; but now this same 
pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Tom was 
too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr. Stelling's stand ard^of 
things was quite different, was certainly something higher in 
the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living 
s. M.— 31 



482 - GEORGE ELIOT 

amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, 
appeared uncouth and stupid ; he was by no means indifferent 
to this, and his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite 
nullified his boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him something 
of the girl's susceptibility. He was of a very firm, not to say 
obstinate disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion and 
recklessness in his nature ; the human sensibilities predomi- 
nated, and if it had occurred to him that he could enable him- 
self to show some quickness at his lessons, and so acquire Mr. 
Stelling's approbation, by standing on one leg for an inconveni- 
ent length of time, or rapping his head moderately against 
the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he would cer- 
tainly have tried it. But no — Tom had never heard that these 
measures would brighten the understanding or strengthen the 
verbal memory ; and he was not given to hypothesis and ex- 
periment. 

It did occur to him that he could perhaps get some help by 
praying for it ; but as the prayers he said every evening were 
forms learned by heart, he rather shrank from the novelty and 
irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a topic of 
petition for which he was not aware of any precedent. But one 
day, when he had broken down, for the fifth time, in the supines 
of the third conjugation, and Mr. Stelling, convinced that this 
must be carelessness, since it transcended the bounds of possible 
stupidity, had lectured him very seriously, pointing out that if 
he failed to seize the present golden opportunity of learning 
supines, he would have to regret it when he became a man — 
Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole 
resource ; and that evening, after his usual form of prayer for 
his parents and " little sister " (he had begun to pray for Mag- 
gie when she was a baby), and that he might be able always to 
keep God's commandments, he added, in the same low whisper, 
" and please to make me always remember my Latin." He 
paused a little to consider how he should pray about Euclid — 
whether he should ask to see what it meant, or whether there 
was any other mental state which would be more applicable to 



TOM'S "FIM8T HALF'' 483 

the case. But at last he added — " And make Mr. Stelling say 
I shan't do EucHd any more. Amen." 

The fact that he got through his supines without mistake 
next day encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his 
prayers, and neutralized any skepticism that might have arisen 
from Mr. Stelling's continued demand for Euclid. But his faith 
broke down under the apparent absence of all help when he got 
into the irregular verbs. It seemed clear that Tom's despair 
under the caprices of the present tense did not constitute a nodus 
worthy of interference, and since this was the climax of his 
difficulties, where was the use of praying for help any longer ? 
He made up his mind to this conclusion in one of his dull, 
lonely evenings, which he spent in the study, preparing his' 
lessons for the morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the 
page — though he hated crying, and was ashamed of it. He 
couldn't help thinking with some affection even of Spouncer, 
whom he used to fight and quarrel with ; he would have felt at 
home with Spouncer, and in a condition of superiority. And 
then the mill, and the river, and Yap pricking up his ears, ready 
to obey the least sign when Tom said, " Hoigh ! " would all 
come before him in a sort of calenture, when his fingers played 
absently in his ]30cket with his great knife and his coil of whip- 
cord, and other relics of the past. 

Tom, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his 
life before, and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was 
further depressed by a new means of mental development which 
had been thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs. Stelling 
had lately had her second baby, and as nothing could be more 
salutary for a boy than to feel himself useful, Mrs. Stelling con- 
sidered she was doing Tom a service by setting him to watch 
the little cherub Laura while the nurse was occupied with the 
sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment for Tom to 
take little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the autumn day — 
it would help to make him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a 
home for him, and that he was one of the family. The little 
cherub Laura, not being an accomplished walker at present, 



484 GEOBGE ELIOT 

had a ribbon fastened round her waist, by which Tom held her 
as if she had been a little dog during the minutes in which she 
chose to walk ; but as these were rare, he was for the most part 
carrying this fine child round and round the garden, within 
sight of Mrs. Stelling's window— according to orders. 

If any one considers this unfair and even oppressive toward 
Tom, I beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues 
which are with difficulty combined, even if they are not incom- 
patible. When the wife of a poor curate contrives, under all her 
disadvantages, to dress extremely well and to have a style of 
coiffure which requires that her nurse shall occasionally officiate 
as lady's-maid— when, moreover, her dinner-parties and her 
drawing-room show that effort of elegance and completeness of 
appointment to which ordinary women might imagine a large 
income necessary, it would be unreasonable to expect of her that 
she should employ a second nurse, or even act as a nurse herself 
Mr. Stelling knew better ; he saw that his wife did wonders 
already, and was proud of her ; it was certainly not the best 
thing in the world for young Tulliver's gait to carry a heavy 
child, but he had plenty of exercise in long walks with himself, 
and next half-year Mr. Stelling would see about having a drill- 
ing-master. Among the many means whereby Mr. Stelling 
intended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his fellow-men, 
he had entirely given up that of having his own way in his own 
house. What then?— he had married " as kind a little soul as 
ever breathed," according to Mr. Riley, who had been acquainted 
with Mrs. Stelling's blonde ringlets and smiling demeanor 
throughout her maiden life, and on the strength of that knowl- 
edge would have been ready any day to pronounce that what- 
ever domestic differences might arise in her married life must 
be entirely Mr. Stelling's fault. 

If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have 
hated the little cherub, Laura ; but he was too kind-hearted a 
lad for that— there was too much in him of the fiber that turns 
to true manliness, and to protecting pity for the weak. 1 am 
afraid he hated Mrs. Stelling, and contracted a lasting dislike 



TOM'S "FIRST HALF" 485 

to pale blonde ringlets and broad plaits, as directly associated 
with haughtiness of manner, and a frequent reference to other 
people's " duty." But he couldn't helj) playing with . little 
Laura, and liking to amuse her ; he even sacrificed his percus- 
sion caps for her sake, in despair of their ever serving a greater 
purpose — thinking the small flash and bang would delight her, 
and thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs. Stell- 
ing for teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort 
of playfellow — and oh, how Tom longed for playfellows ! In his 
secret heart he yearned to have Maggie with him, and was 
almost ready to dote on her exasperating acts of forgetfulness ; 
though, when he was at home, he always represented it as a 
great favor on his part to let Maggie trot by his side on his 
pleasure excursions. 

And before this dreary half-year was ended, Maggie actually 
came. Mrs. Stelling had given a general invitation for the little 
girl to come and stay with her brother ; so when Mr. Tulliver 
drove over to King's Lorton late in October, Maggie came, too, 
with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and begin- 
ning to see the world. It was Mr. Tulliver's first visit to see 
Tom, for the lad must learn not to think too much about home. 

" Well, my lad," he said to Tom, when Mr. Stelling left the 
room to announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie had 
begun to kiss Tom freely, " you look rarely ! School agrees 
with you." 

Tom wished he had looked rather ill. 

" I don't think I am well, father," said Tom ; " I wish you'd 
ask Mr. Stelling not to let me do Euclid — it brings on the 
toothache, I think." 

(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever 
been subject.) 

" Euclid, my lad — why, what's that ? " said Mr. Tulliver. 

"Oh, I don't know; it's definitions, and axioms and, tri- 
angles, and things. It's a book I've got to learn in — there's no 
sense in it." 

" Go, go ! " said Mr. Tulliver, reprovingly, " you mustn't say 



486 GEORGE ELIOT 

SO. You must learn what your master tells you. He knows 
what is right for you to learn." 

" Vll help you now, Tom," said Maggie, with a little air of 
patronizing consolation. " I've come to stay ever so long, if 
Mrs. Stelling asks me. I've brought my box and my pinafores, 
haven't I, father?" 

" You help me, you little silly thing!" said Tom, in such 
high spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the 
idea of confounding Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. 
" I should like to see you doing one of -rwy lessons ! Why, I 
learn Latin, too ! Girls never learn such things. They're too 
silly." 

" I know what Latin is very well," said Maggie, confidently. 
" Latin's a language. There are Latin words in the dictionary. 
There's bonus, a gift." 

" Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Maggie ! " said Tom, 
secretly astonished. " You think you're very wise ! But 
' bonus ' means ' good,' as it happens — bonus, bona, bonum." 

" Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean ' gift,' " said 
Maggie, stoutly. " It may mean several things — almost every 
word does. There's ' lawn,' — it means the grass-jDlot, as well as 
the stuff pocket-handkerchiefs are made of." 

" Well done, little 'un," said Mr. Tulliver, laughing, while 
Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie's knowingness, though 
beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going to 
stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overawed by the 
actual inspection of his books. 

Mrs. Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a 
longer time than a week for Maggie's stay; but Mr. Stelling, 
who took her between his knees, and asked her where she stole 
her dark eyes from, insisted that she must stay a fortnight. 
Maggie thought Mr. Stelling was a charming man, and Mr. 
Tulliver was quite proud to leave his little wench where she 
would have an opportunity of showing her cleverness to appre- 
ciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should not be 
fetched home till the end of the fortnight. 



TOM'S ''FIRST HALF'' 487 

" Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie," said 
Tom, as their father drove away. " What do you shake and 
toss your head now for, you silly ? " he continued ; for though 
her hair was now under a new dispensation, and was brushed 
smoothly behind her ears, she seemed still in imagination to be 
tossing it out of her eyes. " It makes you look as if you were 
crazy." 

" Oh, I can't help that," said Maggie, impatiently. " Don't 
tease me, Tom. Oh, what books ! " she exclaimed, as she saw 
the book-cases in the study, "How I should like to have as 
many books as that ! " 

" Why, you couldn't read one of 'em," said Tom, triumphantly. 
" They're all Latin." 

" No, they aren't, " said Maggie. " I can read the back of this 
— * History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' " 

" Well, what does that mean ? You don't know," said Tom, 
wagging his head. 

" But I could soon find out," said Maggie, scornfully. 

"Why, how?" 

" I should look inside, and see what it was about." 

" You'd better not. Miss Maggie," said Tom, seeing her hand 
on the volume. " Mr. Stelling lets nobody touch his books 
without leave, and I shall catch it, if you take it out." 

" Oh, very well ! Let me see all your books, then," said 
Maggie, turning to throw her arms round Tom's neck, and rub 
his cheek with her small round nose. 

Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Maggie 
to dispute with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, 
and began to jump with her round the large librar}^ table. 
Away they jumped with more and more vigor, till Maggie's 
hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled about like an 
animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became 
more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last reaching 
Mr. Stelling's reading-stand, they sent it thundering down with 
its heavy lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground- 
floor, and the study was a one-storied wing to the house, so 



488 GEORGE ELIOT 

that the downfall made no alarming resonance, though Tom 
stood dizzy and aghast for a few minutes, dreading the appear- 
ance of Mr. or Mrs. Stelling. 

" Oh, I say, Maggie," said Tom at last, lifting up the stand, 
" we must keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything, 
Mrs. Stelling '11 make us cry peccavi." 

"What's that?" said Maggie. 

"■ Oh, it's the Latin for a good scolding," said Tom, not with- 
out some pride in his knowledge. 

" Is she a cross woman ? " said Maggie. 

" I believe you ! " said Tom, with an emphatic nod. 

"I think all women are crosser than men," said Maggie. 
"Aunt Glegg's a great deal crosser than Uncle Glegg, and 
mother scolds me more than father does." 

" Well, you^ll be a woman some day," said Tom, " so you 
needn't talk." 

" But I shall be a clever woman," said Maggie, with a toss. 

" Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. Everybody '11 
hate you." 

" But you oughtn't to hate me, Tom ; it '11 be very wicked of 
you, for I shall be your sister." 

" Yes, but if you're a disagreeable thing, I shall hate you." 

"Oh, but, Tom, you won't! I shan't be disagreeable. I shall 
be very good to you — and I shall be good to everybody. You 
won't hate me really, will you, Tom ? " 

" Oh, bother ! never mind ! Come, it's time for me to learn 
my lessons. See here ! what I've got to do," said Tom, drawing 
Maggie toward him and showing her his theorem, while she 
pushed her hair behind her ears, and prepared herself to prove 
her capability of helping him in Euclid. She began to read 
with full confidence in her own powers, but presently, becom- 
ifig quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was 
unavoidable — she must confess her incompetency, and she was 
not fond of humiliation. 

" It's nonsense ! " she said, " and very ugly stuff — nobody need 
want to make it out." 



TOM'S "FIRST HALF'' 489 

" Ah, there now, Miss Maggie ! " said Tom, drawing the book 
away, and wagging his head at her, "you see you're not so 
clever as you thought you were." 

" Oh," said Maggie, pouting, " I dare say I could make it 
out, if I'd learned what goes before, as you have." 

" But that's what you just couldn't, Miss Wisdom," said Tom. 
" For it's all the harder when you know what goes before ; for 
then you've got to say what definition 3 is, and what axiom V. 
is. But get along with you now. I must go on with this. 
Here's the Latin Grammar. See what you can make of that. 

Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her 
mathematical mortification; for she delighted in new words, 
and quickly found that there was an English Key at the end, 
which would make her very wise about Latin, at slight expense. 
She presently made up her mind to skip the rules in the Syntax 
— the examples became so absorbing. These mysterious sen- 
tences, snatched from an unknown context, — like strange horns 
of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some 
far-off region, — gave boundless scope to her imagination, and 
were all the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar 
tongue of their own, which she could learn to interpret. It was 
really very interesting — the Latin Grammar that Tom had said 
no girls could learn ; and she was proud because she found it 
interesting. The most fragmentary examples were her favorites. 
Mors omnibus est communis would have been jejune, only she 
liked to know the Latin ; but the fortunate gentleman whom 
every one congratulated because he had a son " endowed with 
such a disposition " afforded her a great deal of pleasant con- 
jecture, and she was quite lost in the " thick grove penetrable 
by no star," when Tom called out : 

" Now, then, Magsie, give us the grammar ! " 

" Oh, Tom, it's such a pretty book ! " she said, as she jumped 
out of the large arm-chair to give it him ; " it's much prettier 
than the dictionary. I could learn Latin very soon. I don't 
think it's at all hard." 

" Oh, I know what you've been doing," said Tom, " you've 



490 GEORGE ELIOT 

been reading the English at the end. Any donkey can do 
that." 

Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and 
business-Hke air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn 
which no donkeys would find themselves equal to. Maggie, 
rather piqued, turned to the book-cases, to amuse herself with 
puzzling out the titles. 

Presently Tom called to her : " Here, Magsie, come and hear 
if I can say this. Stand at that end of the table, where Mr. 
Stelling sits when he hears me." 

Maggie obeyed, and took the open book. 

" Where do you begin, Tom ? " 

" Oh, I begin at 'Appellativa arborum,' because I say all over 
again what I've been learning this week." 

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines ; and Maggie was 
beginning to forget her office of prompter in speculating as to 
what mas could mean, which came twice over, when he stuck 
fast at Sunt etiam volucrum. 

" Don't tell me, Maggie ; Sunt etiam volucrum — Sunt etiam 
volucrum — ut ostrea, cetus " 

"No," said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her 
Jiead. 

" Sunt etiam volucrum,'^ said Tom, very slowly, as if the next 
words might be expected to come sooner when he gave them 
this strong hint that they were waited for. 

" C, e, u," said Maggie, getting impatient. 

" Oh, I know — hold your tongue," said Tom. " Oeu passer, 
hirundo; Ferarum—ferarum — " Tom took his pencil and 
made several hard dots with it on his book-cover — ''/era- 



rum- 



" Oh dear, oh dear, Tom," said Maggie, " what a time you 
are! Ut " 

" Ut ostrea " 



" No, no," said Maggie, " ut tigris " 

" Oh, yes, now I can do," said Tom ; " it was tigris, vulpes, I'd 
forgotten : ut tigris, vulpes ; et Piscium." 



TOM'S ''FIB8T HALF'' 491 

With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got 
through the next few lines. 

" Now, then," he said, " the next is what I've just learned for 
to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a minute." 

After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the beating of his 
fist on the table, Tom returned the book. 

" Mascula nomina in a," he began. 

" No, Tom," said Maggie, " that doesn't come next. It's 
Nomen non creskens genittivo " 

" Oreskens genittivo ! " exclaimed Tom, with a derisive laugh, 
for Tom had learned this omitted passage for his yesterday's 
lesson, and a young gentleman does not require an intimate or 
extensive acquaintance with Latin before he can feel the piti- 
able absurdity of a false quantity. '' Oreskens genittivo ! What 
a little silly you are, Maggie ! " 

" Well, you needn't laugh, Tom, for you didn't remember it 
at all. I'm sure it's spelled so ; how was I to know? " 

" Phee-e-e-h ! I told you girls couldn't learn Latin. It's 
Nomen non crescens genitivo " 

" Very well, then," said Maggie, pouting. " I can say that as 
well as you can. And you don't mind your stops. For you 
ought to stop twice as long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, 
and you make the longest stops where there ought to be no 
stop at all." 

" Oh, well, don't chatter. Let me go on." 

They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the evening 
in the drawing-room, and Maggie became so animated with 
Mr. Stelling, who, she felt sure, admired her cleverness, that 
Tom was rather amazed and alarmed at her audacity. But she 
was suddenly subdued by Mr. Stelling's alluding to a little girl 
of whom he had heard that she once ran away to the gypsies. 

" What a very odd little girl that must be ! " said Mrs. Stelling, 
meaning to be playful — but a playfulness that turned on her 
supposed oddity was not at all to Maggie's taste. She feared 
that Mr. Stelling, after all, did not think much of her, and went 
to bed in rather low spirits. Mrs. Stelling, she felt, looked at 



492^ GEORGE ELIOT 

her as if she thought her hair was very ugly because it hung 
down straight beliind. 

Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, this 
visit to Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while he had 
his lessons, and in her various readings got very deep into the 
examples in the Latin Grammar. The astronomer who hated 
women generally, caused her so much puzzling speculation that 
she one day asked Mr. Stelling if all astronomers hated women, 
or whether it was only this particular astronomer. But fore- 
stalling his answer, she said : 

" I suppose it's all astronomers ; because, you know, they live 
up in high towers, and if the women came there, they might 
talk and hinder them from looking at the stars." 

Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on 
the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to 
Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She 
knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and 
she saw what ABC meant : they were the names of the lines. 

" I'm sure you couldn't do it now," said Tom ; " and I'll just 
ask Mr. Stelling if you could." 

" I don't mind," said the little conceited minx. " I'll ask him 
myself" 

"Mr. Stelling," she said, that same evening when they were 
in the drawing-room, " couldn't I do Euclid, and all Tom's les- 
sons, if you were to teach me instead of him ? " 

" No ; you couldn't," said Tom, indignantly. " Girls can't do 
Euclid ; can they, sir ? " 

" They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say," said 
Mr. Stelling. " They've a great deal of superficial cleverness ; 
but can't go far into anything. They're quick and shallow." 

Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by 
wagging his head at Maggie, behind Mr. Stelling's chair. As 
for Maggie, she had hardly ever been so mortified. She had 
been so proud to be called " quick " all her little life, and now 
it appeared that this quickness was the brand of inferiority. It 
would have been better to be slow, like Tom. 



TOM' 8 "FIRST HALF'' 49S 

" Ha, ha ! Miss Maggie ! " said Tom, when they were alone ; 
" you see it's not such a fine thing to be quick. You'll never 
go far into anything, you know." 

And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that 
she had no spirit for a retort. 

But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was 
fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the study was once more 
quite lonely for Tom, he missed her grievously. He had really 
been brighter, and had got through his lessons better, since she 
had been there ; and she had asked Mr. Stelling so many ques- 
tions about the Roman Empire, and whether there really ever 
was a man who said in Latin, " I would not'buy it for a farthing 
or a rotten nut," or whether that had only been turned into 
Latin, that Tom had actually come to a dim understanding of 
the fact that there had once been people upon the earth who 
were so fortunate as to know Latin without learning it through 
the medium of the Eton Grammar. This luminous idea was 
a great addition to his historical acquirements during this half- 
year, which were otherwise confined to an epitomized history 
of the Jews. 

But the dreary half-year did come to an end. How glad 
Tom was to see the last yellow leaves fluttering before the cold 
wind ! The dark afternoons, and the first December snow, 
seemed to him far livelier than the August sunshine ; and that 
he might make himself the surer about the flight of days that 
were carrying him homeward, he stuck twenty-one sticks deep 
in a corner of the garden, when he was three weeks from the 
holidays, and pulled one up every day with a great wrench, 
throwing it to a distance with a vigor of will which would have 
carried it to limbo, if it had been in the nature of sticks to travel 
so far. 

But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy price of the 
Latin Grammar — ^the happiness of seeing the bright light in the 
parlor at home, as the gig passed noiselessly over the snow- 
covered bridge; the happiness of passing from the cold air to 
the warmth and the kisses and the smiles of that familiar 



494 QEOBGE ELIOT 

hearth, where the pattern of the rug and the grate and the 
fire-irons were "first-ideas" that it was no more possible to 
criticise than the solidity and extension of matter. There is 
no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we 
were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known 
the labor of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an 
extension of our own personality : we accepted and loved it as 
we accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs. 

Very common-place, even ugly, that furniture of our early 
home might look if it were put up at auction ; an improved 
taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving after 
something better and better in our surroundings, the grand 
characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute — or, to 
satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes 
the British man from the foreign brute ? But Heaven knows 
where that striving might lead us, if our affections had not a 
trick of twining round those old inferior things — if the loves 
and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots in mem- 
ory. One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the 
confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more gladdening 
sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the 
softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable preference 
to a nursery-gardener, or to any of those severely regulated 
minds who are free from the weakness of any attachment that 
does not rest on a demonstrable superiority of qualities. And 
there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush 
than that it stirs an early memory — that it is no novelty in 
my life, speaking to me merely through my present sensibili- 
ties to form and color, but the long companion of my existence, 
that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 

1783-1859 

No name in our literary annals is more fondly cherished than that 
of Washington Irving, one of the earliest and most distinguished of 
American wi'iters. He was horn in New York in 1783, and died at 
Sunnyside, his home on the Hudson, in 1859. He began his literary 
career by contributing to the columns of the Morning Chronicle, of 
which his brother. Dr. Peter Irving, was editor. His health failing, 
he went to Europe, where he remained two years. On his return he 
was admitted to the Bar, but gave little attention to his profession. In 
1807 appeared the first number of Salmagundi; or, the Whim Whams 
and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff and Others, — a semi-monthly 
periodical of light and agreeable character, which was very popular 
during its existence of less than two years. In 1809 the famous ' ' His- 
tory of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker," was published, and 
had a most cordial reception. The next year Washington Irving 
became a partner in the mercantile business conducted by his brothers ; 
but in 1813 the firm failed, and the young author returned to literary 
labors, 

"The Sketch-Book" appeared in 1819, and established his fame 
in England and America. " Bracebridge Hall," "The Conquest of 
Granada," " The Life of Columbus," and other works, were issued at 
intervals prior to 1832. In 1843 he was appointed United States Min- 
ister to Spain, and held that office four years. After his return he 
wrote a " Life of Goldsmith," " The Life of Washington," and " Ma- 
homet and his Successors." It is safe to say that no American author 
has been so generally and heartily loved as Washington Irving, and 
he was as popular in Great Britain as at home. His style is a model 
of ease, grace, and re8.nement. 

Characterization 

Other writers may no doubt arise in the course of time, who will 
exhibit in verse or prose a more commanding talent, and soar a still 
loftier fiight in the empyrean sky of glory. Some western Homer, 
Shakespeare, Milton, Corneille, or Calderon, may irradiate our literary 

495 



496 WASHmGTON IRVING 

world wifh. a flood of splendor that shall throw all other greatness 
into the shade. This, or something- like it may or may not happen ; 
but even if it should, it can never be disputed that the mild and beau- 
tiful genius of Mr. Irving was the Morning Star that led up the march 
of our heavenly host ; and that he has a fair right, much fairer cer- 
tainly than the great Mantuan, to assume the proud device, ' ' Primus 
ego in patriam.''^ 

Alexander H. Everett. 

Ichabod Crane 

(From " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ") 

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent 
the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of 
the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the 
Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, 
and implored the protection of Saint Nicholas when they 
crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by 
some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and 
properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was 
given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of 
the adjacent country, from the inveterate jDropensity of their 
husbands to linger about the village tavern on market-days. 
Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely 
advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not 
far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little 
valley, or rather la]3 of land, among high hills, which is one of 
the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides 
through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose ; and 
the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, 
is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform 
tranquillity. 

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel 
shooting was in a grove of tall walnut trees that shades one 
side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon-time, when 
all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of 
my own gun as it broke the Sabbath stillness around, and was 



lOEABOD CRANE 497 

prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I 
should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world 
and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a 
troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little 
valley. 

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar char- 
acter of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original 
Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by 
the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the 
Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. 
A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and 
to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was 
bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of 
the settlement ; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or 
wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country 
was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the 
place still continues under the sway of some witching power, 
that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing 
them to walk in a continual revery. They are given to all 
kinds of marvelous beliefs ; are subject to trances and visions ; 
and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in 
the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, 
haunted spots, and twilight superstitions ; stars shoot and 
meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part 
of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, 
seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols. 

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted 
region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of 
the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a 
head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, 
whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some 
nameless battle during the Revolutionary War; and who is 
ever and anon seen by the country folk, hurrying along in the 
gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts 
are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adja- 
cent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great 

S. M.— 32 



498 WASSINGTON IRVING 

distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of 
those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating 
the floating facts concerning this specter, allege that, the body 
of the trooper having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost 
rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head ; 
and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes 
along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being 
belated, and in a hurry to get back to the church-yard before 
daybreak. 

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, 
which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that 
region of shadows ; and the specter is known, at all the countr}'- 
firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy 
Hollow. 

It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have men- 
tioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, 
but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for 
a time. However wide-awake they may have been before they 
entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to 
inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow 
imaginative, — to dream dreams and see apparitions. 

I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud ; for it is 
in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there em- 
bosomed in the great state of New York, that population, man- 
ners, and customs remain fixed; while the great torrent of 
migration and improvement which is making such incessant 
changes in other parts of this restless country sweeps by them 
unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water which 
border a rapid stream ; where we may see the straw and bubble 
riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic 
harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though 
many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of 
Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find 
the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered 
bosom. 

In this by-place of Nature there abode, in a remote period of 



IGHABOD GRANE 499 

American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a 
worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane; who sojourned, 
or, as he expressed it, " tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the pur- 
pose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a 
native of Connecticut — a state which supplies the Union with 
pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth 
yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country school- 
masters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to 
his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow 
shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out 
of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his 
whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, 
and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a 
long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched 
upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see 
him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with 
his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have 
mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the 
earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. 

His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, 
rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and 
partly patched with leaves of old copy-books. It was most 
ingeniously secured at vacant hours by a withe twisted in the 
handle of the door, and stakes set against the window-shutters ; 
so that, though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would 
find some embarrassment in getting out — an idea most jDrobably 
borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery 
of an eel-pot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but 
pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook 
running close by, and a formidable birch-tree growing at one 
end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, 
conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy sum- 
mer's day, like the hum of a beehive, interrupted now and then 
by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace 
or command ; or, perad venture, by the appalling sound of the 
birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of 



500 WASHINOTON IRVING 

knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and 
ever bore in mind the golden maxim, " Spare the rod, and spoil 
the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled. 

I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of 
those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their 
subjects ; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimi- 
nation rather than severity ; taking the burden off the backs of 
the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere 
puny stripling that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was 
passed by with indulgence ; but the claims of justice were satis- 
fied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough, wrong- 
headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled 
and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he 
called " doing his duty by their parents ; " and he never inflicted 
a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consol- 
atory to the smarting urchin, that " he would remember it, and 
thank him for it, the longest day he had to live." 

When school-hours were over he was even the companion 
and playmate of the larger boys ; and on holiday afternoons 
would convoy some of the smaller ones home who happened 
to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for motliers, noted 
for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to 
keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from 
his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient 
to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, 
though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda ; but to 
help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom 
in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers 
whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively 
a week at a time ; thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, 
with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. 

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his 
rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a 
grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had 
various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. 
He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of 



ICEABOD CRANE 601 

their farms ; helped to make hay ; mended the fences ; took 
the horses to water ; drove the cows from pasture ; cut wood for 
the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity 
and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, 
the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. 
He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the chil- 
dren, particularly the youngest ; and like the lion bold, which 
whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit 
with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for 
whole hours together. 

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master 
of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by 
instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of 
no little vanity to him, on Sundays, to take his station in front 
of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers ; where, in 
his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the 
parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the 
rest of the congregation ; and there are peculiar quavers still to 
be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a 
mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still 
Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended 
from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus by divers little make- 
shifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated 
" by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on toler- 
ably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing 
of the labor of head-work, to have a wonderfully easy life of it. 

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in 
the female circle of a rural neighborhood, being considered a 
kind of idle gentleman-like personage, of vastly superior taste 
and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, 
inferior in learning only to the jDarson. His appearance, there- 
fore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farm- 
house, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or 
sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver tea-pot. 
Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles 
of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them 



602 WASHINGTON IRVING 

in the church-yard, between services on Sundays ! gathering 
grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surround- 
ing trees ; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the 
tombstones ; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along 
the banks of the adjacent mill-pond ; while the more bashful 
country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior 
elegance and address. 

From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling 
gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to 
house ; so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfac- 
tion. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of 
great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, 
and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's " History of New 
England Witchcraft " — in which, by the way, he most firmly 
and potently believed. 

He was, in fact, a mixture of small shrewdness and simple 
credulity. His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers of 
digesting it, were equally extraordinary ; and both had been 
increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale 
was too gross or monstrous for ' his capacious swallow. It was 
often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, 
to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little 
brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over 
old Mather's direful tales until the gathering dusk of the even- 
ing made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, 
as he wended his way, by swamp and stream and awful wood- 
land, to the farm-house where he happened to be quartered^ 
every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his 
excited imagination, — the moan of the whippoorwill from the 
hill-side; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of 
storm ; the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden 
rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. 
■The fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest 
places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon bright- 
ness would stream across his path ; and if, by chance, a huge 
blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against 



ICHABOD GBANE 503* 

him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the 
idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource 
on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil 
spirits, was to sing psalm-tunes; and the good people of Sleepy 
Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often 
filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, in " linked sweet- 
ness long drawn out," floating from the distant hill, or along 
the dusky road. 

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was, to pass long 
winter evenings with the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning 
by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along 
the hearth, and listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and 
goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted 
bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless 
horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they some- 
times called him. He would delight them equally by his anec- 
dotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous 
sights and sounds in the air which prevailed in the earlier times 
of Connecticut ; and would frighten them wofully with specula- 
tions upon comets and shooting stars ; and with the alarming 
fact that the world did absolutely turn round ; and that they 
were half the time topsy-turvy I 



GEORGE MacDONALD 

1824 

G-EORGE MacDonald, a descendant of the MacDonalds of Grlencoe, 
and a son of a wealthy Scotch manufacturer, was born at Huntley, in 
Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1824. His college days were passed at the 
University of Aberdeen ; and after graduation .he studied theology at 
Owen's College, in Manchester. For some years he was an indepen- 
dent minister in Surrey and Sussex counties, England. Later he be- 
came a layman of the established English Church. In 1855, Mr. Mac- 
Donald issued a volume of poetry, entitled "Within and Without." 
This was followed in the succeeding year by another book of "Poems," 
and in 1858 by " Phantastes, a Fairy Romance." 

In 1863 appeared the author's first novel, "David Elginbrod," a 
work of powerful and dramatic interest, peculiarly tinged with his 
speculative tendency and mystic significance. The success of the book 
demonstrated that the writer had found his true vocation. Other prose 
works followed in quick succession, maintaining the high standard of 
the first, and revealing an untiring energy, and an inexhaustible in- 
vention which recalled the career of Sir Walter Scott. In 1872-3 Mr. 
MacDonald visited the United States, and made a lecturing tour of 
leading American cities, in which he was most cordially received. He 
has long resided alternately in London and at Hastings. Among his 
best novels are " The Portent, " "David Elginbrod," "Robert Fal- 
coner," "Wilfred Cumbermede," "Malcolm," and "Sir Gibbie." 

Characterization 

Certain qualities of Mr. MacDonald's writings lie so immediately 
upon the surface that it can scarcely be said that you notice them. 
Upon reflection, you recall them ; but it would hardly strike you to 
say that he is singularly pure, elevated, and tender, or that he wrote 
beautiful English. Yet, of course, all this is true ; and the transpar- 
ency or lucidity of his style appears to be closely connected with, per- 
haps, the first peculiarity that an attentive reader can be said to 
notice. It reminds you of running water ; and so, also, does the course 
of the author's thought. . . . We can see that he is primarily a 
poet ; he sometimes reaches the perfection of poetic form which car- 
504 



EXTRACTS FROM •'MALCOLM" 605 

ries with it the infinite suggestion that may make a small poem more 
valuable than a big prose book, however good. Yet the superiority 
in point of force and profusion, rests with his prose works. ... It 
may be a hazardous thing to say, but he reminds us more of Mendels- 
sohn than of any writer. We have already hinted tliat we take his 
genius to be, on the whole, the flower of certain spiritual tendencies 
of our time, and a very beautiful and fragrant flower it is. In the 
dainty little casket which shuts over these ten volumes there is more 
of a talismanic virtue than the reader will appropriate in a lifetime. 

' ' Contemporary Review. " 



Extracts from " Malcolm " 

The sea-town of Portlossie was as irregular a gathering of 
small cottages as could be found on the surface of the globe. 
They faced every way, turned their backs and gables every way 
— only of the roofs could you predict the position; were divided 
from each other by every sort of small, irregular space and 
passage, and looked like a national assembly debating a con- 
stitution. Close behind the Seaton, as it was called, ran a high- 
way, climbing far above the chimneys of the village to the level 
of the town above. Behind this road, and separated from it by 
a high wall of stone, lay a succession of heights and hollows 
covered with grass. In front of the cottages lay sand and sea. 
The place was cleaner than most fishing-villages, but so closely 
built, so thickly inhabited, and so pervaded with " a very an- 
cient and fish-like smell," that but for the besom of the salt 
north wind it must have been unhealthy. Eastward the houses 
could extend no further for the harbor, and westward no further 
for a small river that crossed the sands to find the sea — dis- 
cursively and merrily at low water, but with sullen, submissive 
mingling when banked back by the tide. 

Avoiding the many nets extended long and wide on the 
grassy sands, the youth Malcolm walked through the tide-swol- 
len mouth of the river, and passed along the front of the village 
until he arrived at a house, the small window in the seaward 
gable of which was filled with a curious collection of things for 
sale — dusty-looking sweets in a glass bottle; ginger-bread cakes 



506 GEORGE MACDONALD 

in the shape of large hearts, thickly studded with sugar-plums 
of rainbow colors, invitingly poisonous ; strings of tin covers 
for tobacco-pipes, over-lapping each other like fish-scales ; toys, 
and tapes, and needles, and twenty other kinds of things, all 
huddled together. 

Turning the corner of this house, he went down the narrow 
passage between it and the next, and in at its open door. But 
the moment it was entered it lost all appearance of a shop, and 
the room with the tempting window showed itself only as a 
poor kitchen with an earthen floor. 

" Weel, hoo did the pipes behave themsels the day, daddy? " 
said the youth as he strode in. 

*' Och, she'll pe peing a coot poy to-day," returned the tremu- 
lous voice of a gray-headed old man, who was leaning over a 
small peat-fire on the hearth, sifting oatmeal through the fin- 
gers of his left hand into a pot, while he stirred the boiling 
mess with a short stick held in his right. 

It had grown to be understood between them that the pul- 
monary conditions of the old piper should be attributed not to 
his internal, but his external lungs — namely, the bag of his 
pipes. Both sets had of late years manifested strong symptoms 
of decay, and decided measures had had to be again and again 
resorted to in the case of the latter to put off its evil day, and 
keep within it the breath of its musical existence. The youth's 
question, then, as to the behavior of the pipes, was in reality 
an inquiry after the condition of his grandfather's lungs, which, 
for their part, grew yearly more and more asthmatic : notwith- 
standing which Duncan MacPhail would not hear of resigning 
the dignity of town-piper. 

" That's fine, daddy," returned the youth. " Wull I mak oot 
the parritch ? I'm thinkin' ye've had eneuch o' hangin' ower 
the fire this het mornin'." ... 

Malcolm lifted the pot from the table and set it on the 

hearth ; put the plates together and the spoons, and set them 

on a chair, for there was no dresser ; tilted the table, and wiped 

it hearthward — then from a shelf took down and laid upon it 

33 



EXTBAGT8 FROM "MALCOLM'' 507 

a Bible, before which he seated himself with an air of reverence. 
The old man sat down on a low chair by the chimney corner, 
took off his bonnet, closed his eyes and murmured some almost 
inaudible words ; then repeated in Gaelic the first line of the 
hundred and third psalm : 

O m' anam, beannuich thus' a nis — 

and raised a tune of marvelous wail. Arrived at the end of 
the line, he repeated the process with the next, and so went on, 
giving every line first in the voice of speech and then in the 
voice of song, through three stanzas of eight lines each. And 
no less strange was the singing than the tune — wild and wail- 
ful as the wind of his native desolations, or as the sound of his 
own pipes borne thereon ; and apparently all but lawless, for 
the multitude of so-called grace-notes, hovering and fluttering 
endlessly around the center-tone like the comments on a text, 
rendered it nearly impossible to unravel from them the air 
even of a known tune. It had in its kind the same liquid 
uncertainty of confluent sound which had hitherto rendered it 
impossible for Malcolm to learn more than a few of the com- 
mon phrases of his grandfather's mother-tongue. 

The psalm over, during which the sightless eye-balls of the 
singer had been turned up toward the rafters of the cottage — 
a sign surely that the germ of light, " the sunny seed," as 
Henry Vaughan calls it, must be in him, else why should he 
lift his eyes when he thought upward ? — Malcolm read a chap- 
ter of the Bible, plainly the next in an ordered succession, for 
it could never have been chosen or culled ; after which they 
kneeled together, and the old man poured out a prayer, begin- 
ning in a low, scarcely audible voice, which, rose at length to a 
loud, modulated chant. Not a sentence, hardly a phrase of 
the utterance did his grandson lay hold of; but there were a 
few inhabitants of the place who could have interpreted it, and 
it was commonly believed that one part of his devotions was 
invariably a prolonged petition for vengeance on Campbell of 
Glenlyon, the main instrument in the massacre of Glencoe. 



508 GEORGE MacDONALD 

He could have prayed in English, and then his grandson 
might have joined in his petitions, but the thought of such a 
thing would never have presented itself to him. Nay, although, 
understanding both languages, he used that which was unin- 
telligible to the lad, he yet regarded himself as the party who 
had the right to resent the consequent schism. Such a conver- 
sation as now followed was no new thing after prayers. 

•' I could fery well wish, Malcolm, my son," said the old man, 
•' tat you would be learnin' to speak your own lancuach. It is 
all fery well for ta Sassenach (Saxon, i.e., non-Celtic) podies to 
read ta Piple in English, for it will be pleasing ta Maker not 
to make tem cawpable of ta Gaelic, no more tan monkeys ; but 
for all tat it's not ta vord of God. Ta Gaelic is ta lancuach of 
ta carden of Aiden, and no doubt but it pe ta lancuach in which 
ta Shepherd calls his sheep on ta everlastin' hills. You see, 
Malcolm, it must be so, for how can a mortal man speak to his 
God in anything put Gaelic ? When Mr. Graham — no, not Mr. 
Graham, ta coot man; it was ta new minister — he speak an' 
say to her : ' Mr. MacPhail, you ought to make your prayers in 
Enclish,' I was fery wrathful, and I answered and said : ' Mr. 
Downey, do you tare to suppose tat God doesn't prefer ta Gaelic 
to ta Sassenach tongue ? ' — ' Mr. MacPhail,' says he, ' it'll pe for 
your poy I mean it. How's ta lad to learn ta way of salvation 
if you speak to your God in his j)resence in a strange tongue ? ' 
So I was opedient to his vord, and ta next efening I tid kneel 
town in Sassenach and I tid make begin. But, ochone ! she 
wouldn't go ; her tongue would be cleafing to ta roof of her 
mouth ; ta claymore woold be sticking rusty in ta scappard ; 
for her heart she was ashamed to speak to ta Hielan'man's 
Maker in ta Sassenach tongue. You must pe learning ta 
Gaelic, or you'll not pe peing worthy to pe her nain son, 
Malcolm." 

As soon as his grandfather left the house, Malcolm went out 
also, closing the door behind him, and turning the key, but 
leaving it in the lock. He ascended to the upper town, only, 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 509 

however, to pass through its main street, at the top of which 
he turned and looked back for a few moments, apparently in 
contemplation. The descent to the shore was so sudden that 
he could see nothing of the harbor or of the village he had left 
— nothing but the blue bay and the filmy mountains of Suther- 
landshire, molten by distance into cloudy questions, and look- 
ing, betwixt blue sea and blue sky, less substantial than either. 
After gazing for a moment, he turned again, and held on his 
way, through fields which no fence parted from the road. The 
morning was still glorious, the larks right jubilant, and the 
air filled with the sweet scents of cottage flowers. Across the 
fields came the occasional low of an ox, and the distant sounds 
of children at play. But Malcolm saw without noting, and 
heard without seeing, for his mind was full of" speculation 
concerning the lovely girl whose vision appeared already far 
off": — who might she be? — whence had she come? — whither 
could she have vanished? That she did not belong to the 
neighborhood was certain, he thought ; but there was a farm- 
house near the sea-town where they let lodgings ; and, although 
it was early in the season, she might belong to some family 
which had come to spend a few of the summer weeks there ; 
possibly his appearance had prevented her from having her 
bath that morning. If he should have the good fortune to s€e 
her again, he would show her a place far fitter for the purpose 
— a perfect arbor of rocks, utterly secluded, with a floor of deep 
sand, and without a hole for crab or lobster. 

His road led him in the direction of a few cottages lying in 
a hollow. Beside them rose a vision of trees, bordered by an 
ivy-grown wall, from amidst whose, summits shot the spire of 
the church ; and from beyond the spire, through the trees, came 
golden glimmers as of vane and crescent and pinnacled ball, 
that hinted at some shadowy abode of enchantment within ; but 
as he descended the slope towards the cottages the trees gradu- 
ally rose and shut in everything. 

These cottages were far more ancient than the houses of the 
town ; were covered with green thatch ; were buried in ivy, and 



610 GEORGE MAODONALB 

would soon be radiant with roses and honeysuckles. They were 
gathered irregularly about a gate of curious old iron-work, open- 
ing on the churchyard, but more like an entrance to the grounds 
behind the church, for it told of ancient state, bearing on each 
of its pillars a great stone heron with a fish in its beak. 

This was the quarter whence had conle the noises of children, 
but they had now ceased, or rather sunk into a gentle murmur, 
which oozed like the sound of bees from a straw-covered bee- 
hive, out of a cottage rather larger than the rest, which stood 
close by the churchyard gate. It was the parish school, and 
these cottages were all that remained of the old town of Port- 
lossie, which had at one time stretched in a long, irregular street 
almost to the shore. The town cross yet stood, but away soli- 
tary on a green hill that overlooked the sands. 

During the summer the long walk from the new town to the 
school and to the church was anything but a hardship ; in winter 
it was otherwise, for then there were days in which few would 
venture the single mile that separated them. 

The door of the school, bisected longitudinall}^, had one of its 
halves open, and by it outfiowed the gentle hum of the honey- 
bees of learning. Malcolm walked in and had the whole of the 
busy scene at once before him. The place was' like a barn, 
open from wall to wall, and from floor to rafters and thatch, 
browned with the peat smoke of vanished winters. Two thirds 
of the space were filled with long desks and forms ; the other 
had only the master's desk, and thus afforded room for stand- 
ing classes. At the present moment it was vacant, for the 
prayer was but just over, and the Bible-class had not been 
called up : there Alexander Graham, the schoolmaster, descend- 
ing from his desk, met and welcomed Malcolm with a kind 
shake of the hand. He was a man of middle height, but very 
thin ; and about five and forty years of age, but looked older, 
because of his thin gray hair and a stoo]3 in the, shoulders. He . 
was dressed in a shabby black tail-coat, and clean white neck- 
cloth ; the rest of his clothes were of parson gray, noticeably 
shabby also. The quiet sweetness of his smile, and a composed 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 511 

look of submission were suggestive of the purification of sor- 
row, but were attributed by the townsfolk to disappointment ; 
for he was still but a schoolmaster, whose aim they thought 
must be a pulpit and a parish. But Mr. Graham had been 
early released from such an ambition, if it had ever possessed 
him, and had for many years been more than content to give 
himself to the hopefuller work of training children for the true 
ends of life. He lived the quietest of studious lives, with an old 
housekeeper. 

Malcolm had been a favorite pupil, and the relation of mas- 
ter and scholar did not cease when the latter saw that he ought 
to do something to lighten the burden of his grandfather, and 
so left the school and betook himself to the life of a fisherman 
— with the slow leave of Duncan, who had set his heart on 
making a scholar of him, and would never, indeed, had Gaelic 
been amongst his studies, have been won by the most labor- 
some petition. He asserted himself perfectly able to provide 
for both for ten years to come at least, in proof of which he 
roused the inhabitants of Portlossie, during the space of a whole 
month, a full hour earlier than usual, with the most terrific 
blasts of the bagpipes, and this notwithstanding complaint and 
expostulation on all sides, so that at length the provost had to 
interfere ; after which outburst of defiance to time, however, 
his energy had begun to decay so visibly that Malcolm gave 
himself to the pipes in secret, that he might be ready, in case 
of sudden emergency, to take his grandfather's place; for 
Duncan lived in constant dread of the hour when his office 
might be taken from him and conferred on a mere drummer, 
or, still worse, on a certain ne'er-do-weel cousin of the provost, 
so devoid of music as to be capable only of ringing a bell. 

" I've had an invitation to Miss Campbell's funeral — Miss 
Horn's cousin, you know," said Mr. Graham, in a hesitating and 
subdued voice. " Could you manage to take the school for me, 
Malcolm ? " 

" Yes, sir. There's naething to hinner me. What day is 't 
upo'?" 



512 GEORGE MacDONALD 

"Saturday." 

*' Verra weel, sir. I s' be here in guid time." 

This matter settled, the business of the school, in which, as 
he did often, Malcolm had come to assist, began. Only a pupil 
of his own could have worked with Mr. Graham, for his mode 
was very peculiar. But the strangest fact in it would have been 
the last to reveal itself to an ordinary observer. This was, that 
he rarely contradicted anything. He would call up the oppos- 
ing truth, set it face to face with the error, and leave the two 
to fight it out. The human mind and conscience were, he said, 
the plains of Armageddon, where the battle of good and evil 
was forever raging ; and the one business of a teacher was to 
rouse and urge this battle by leading fresh forces of the truth 
into the field — forces composed as little as might be of the hire- 
ling troops of the intellect, and as much as possible of the 
native energies of the heart, imagination, and conscience. In 
a word, he would oppose error only by teaching the truth. 

In early life he had come under the influence of the writings 
of William Law, which he read as one who pondered every doe- 
trine in that light which only obedience to the truth can open 
upon it. With a keen eye for the discovery of universal law in 
the individual fact, he read even the marvels of the New Testa- 
ment practically. Hence, in training his soldiers, every lesson 
he gave them was a missile ; every admonishment of youth or 
maiden was as the mounting of an armed champion, and the 
launching of him with a God-speed into the thick of the fight. 

He now called up the Bible-class, and Malcolm sat beside and 
listened. That morning they had to read one of the chapters 
in the history of Jacob. 

" Was Jacob a good man ? " he asked, as soon as the readi.ig 
(each of the scholars in turn taking a verse) was over. 

An apparently universal expression of assent followed ; halt- 
ing in its wake, however, came the voice of a boy near the 
bottom of the class : 

" Wasna he some dooble, sir? " 

" You are right, Sheltie," said the master ; " he was double. 



EXTRACTS FROM '' MALCOLM'' 513 

I must, I find, put the question in another shape : Was Jacob 
a bad man ? " 

Again came such a burst of yeses that it might have been 
taken for a general hiss. But Hmping in the rear came again 
the half-dissentient voice of Jamie Joss, whom the master had 
just addressed as Sheltie : 

" Pairtly, sir." 

" You think, then, Sheltie, that a man may be both bad and 
good ? " 

" I dinna ken, sir. I think he may be whiles ane an' whiles 
the ither, an' whiles maybe it wad be ill to say whilk. Oor 
collie's whiles in twa min's whether he'll du what he's telled or 
no." 

"That's the battle of Armageddon, Sheltie, my man. It's 
aye ragin', ohn gun roared or bagonet clashed. Ye maun up 
an' do yer best in't, my man. Gien ye dee fechtin' like a man, 
ye'U flee up wi' a quaiet face an' wide-open een ; an' there's a 
great Ane 'at '11 say to ye, * Weel dune, laddie ! ' But gien ye 
gie in to the enemy, he'll turn ye intill a creepin' thing 'at eats 
dirt; an' there'll no be a hole in a' the crystal wa' o' the New 
Jerusalem near eneuch to the grun' to lat ye creep throu'." 

As soon as ever Alexander Graham, the polished thinker and 
sweet-mannered gentleman, opened his mouth concerning the 
things he loved best, that moment the most poetic forms came 
pouring out in the most rugged speech. 

" I reckon, sir," said Sheltie, " Jacob hadna fouchten oot his 
battle." 

" That's jist it, my boy. And because he wouldna get up and 
fecht manfully, God had to tak him in ban'. Ye've heard tell 
o' generals, when their troops war rinnin' awa', haein' to cut 
this man doon, shute that ane, and lick anither, till he turned 
them a' richt face aboot and drave them on to the foe like a 
spate ! And the trouble God took wi' Jacob wasna lost upon 
him at last." 

"An' what cam o' Esau, sir?" asked a pale-faced maiden 
with blue eyes. " He wasna an ill kin' o' a chield — was he, sir ? " 
s. M.— 33 



514 GEOROE MagDONALD 

" No, Mappy," answered the master ; " he was a fine chield, 
as you say ; but he nott {needed) mair time and gentler treat- 
ment to mak onything o' him. Ye see he had a guid hert, but 
was a duller kin' o' cratur a'thegither, and cared for naething 
he could na see or han'le. He never thoucht muckle aboot God 
at a'. Jacob was anither sort — a poet kin' o' a man, but a 
sneck-drawin' cratur for a' that. It was easier, hooever, to get 
the slyness oot o' Jacob, than the dullness oot o' Esau. Punish- 
ment tellt upo' Jacob like upon a thin-skinned horse, whauras 
Esau was mair like the minister's powny, that can hardly be 
made to unnerstan' that ye want him to gang on. But o' the 
ither han', dullness is a thing that can be borne wi': there's 
nay hurry aboot that ; but the deceitfu' tricks o' Jacob war na 
to be endured, and sae the tawse (leather-strap) cam doon upo' 
Mm." 

" An' what for didna God mak Esau as clever as Jacob ? " 
asked a wizened-faced boy near the top of the class. 

" Ah, my Peery ! " said Mr. Graham, " I canna tell ye that. 
A' that I can tell is, that God hadna dune makin' at him, an' 
some kin' o' fowk tak langer to mak oot than ithers. An' ye 
canna tell what they're to be till they're made oot. But whether 
what I tell ye be richt or no, God maun hae the verra best o' 
rizzons for 't, ower guid maybe for us to unnerstan' — the best 
o' rizzons for Esau himsel', I mean, for the Creator luiks efter 
his cratur first ava' {of all). And now," concluded Mr. Gra- 
ham, resuming his English, " go to your lessons ; and be dili- 
gent, that God may think it worth while to get on faster with 
the making of you." 

In a moment the class was dispersed and all were seated. 
In another, the sound of scuffling arose, and fists were seen 
storming across a desk. 

" Andrew Jamieson and Poochy, come up here," said the 
master in a loud voice. 

" He hittit me first," cried Andrew, the moment they were 
within a respectful distance of the master, whereupon Mr. Gra- 
ham turned to the other with inquiry in his eyes. 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 515 

" He had nae business to ca' me Poochy." 

"No more he had ; but you had just as little right to punish 
him for it. The offense was against me ; he had no right to 
use my name for you, and the quarrel was mine. For the 
present, you are Poochy no more. Go to your place, William 
Wilson." 

The boy burst out sobbing, and crept back to his seat with his 
knuckles in his eyes. 

" Andrew Jamieson," the master went on, " I had almost got 
a name for you, but you have sent it away. You are not ready 
for it yet, I see. Go to your place." 

With downcast looks Andrew followed William, and the 
watchful eyes of the master saw that, instead of quarreling any 
more during the day, they seemed to catch at every opportunity 
of showing each other a kindness. 

Mr. Graham never used bodily punishment ; he ruled chiefly 
by the aid of a system of individual titles, of the mingled char- 
acters of pet-name and nickname. As soon as the individuality 
of a boy had attained to signs of blossoming — that is, had become 
such that he could predict not only an upright but a character- 
istic behavior in given circumstances, he would take him aside 
and whisper in his ear that henceforth, so long as he deserved 
it, he would call him by a certain name — one generally derived 
from some object in the animal or vegetable world, and pointing 
to a resemblance which was not often patent to any eye but the 
master's own. He had given the name of Poochy, for instance, 
to William Wilson, because, like the kangaroo, he sought his 
object in a succession of awkward, yet not the less availing leaps 
— gulping his knowledge and pocketing his conquered marble 
after a like fashion. Mappy, the name which thus belonged to 
a certain flaxen-haired, soft-eyed girl, corresponds to the English 
bunny. Sheltie is the small Scotch mountain-pony, active and 
strong. Peery means pegtop. But not above a quarter of the 
children had pet names. To gain one was to reach the highest 
honor of the school ; the withdrawal of it was the severest of 
punishments, and the restoring of it the sign of perfect reconcili- 



516 GEOROE MacDONALD 

ation. The master permitted no one else to use it, and was 
seldom known to forget himself so far as to utter it while its 
owner was in disgrace. The hope of gaining such a name, or 
the fear of losing it, was in the pupil the strongest ally of the 
master, the most powerful enforcement of his influences. It was 
a scheme of government by aspiration. But it owed all its 
operative power to the character of the man who had adopted 
rather than invented it — for the scheme had been suggested by 
a certain passage in the book of the Revelation. 

Without having read a word of Swedenborg, he was a believer 
in the absolute correspondence of the inward and outward ; and, 
thus long before the younger Darwin arose, had suspected a close 
relationship — remote identity, indeed, in nature and history, 
between the animal and human worlds. But photographs from 
a good many different points would be necessary to afford any- 
thing like a complete notion of the character of this country 
schoolmaster. 

Towards noon, while he was busy with an astronomical class, 
explaining, by means partly of the blackboard, partly of two 
boys representing the relation of the earth and the moon, how 
it comes that we see but one half of the latter, the door gently 
opened and the troubled face of the mad laird peeped slowly in. 
His body followed as gently, and at last — sad symbol of his 
weight of care — his hump appeared, with a slow half-revolution 
as he turned to shut the door behind him. Taking off his hat, 
he walked up to Mr. Graham, who, busy with his astronomy, 
had not perceived his entrance, touched him on the arm, and, 
standing on tip-toe, whispered softly in his ear, as if it were a 
painful secret that must be respected : 

" I dinna ken whaur I cam frae. I want to come to the 
school." 

Mr. Graham turned and shook hands with him, respectfully 
addressing him as Mr. Stewart, and got down for him the arm- 
chair which stood behind his desk. But with the politest bow 
the laird declined it, and mournfully repeating the words, " I 
dinna ken whaur I cam frae," took a place readily yielded 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 517 

him in the astronomical circle surrounding the symbolic 
boys. 

This was not by any means his first appearance there ; for 
every now and then he was seized with a desire to go to school, 
plainly with the object of finding out where he came from. 
This always fell in his quieter times, and for days together he 
would attend regularly ; in one instance he was not absent an 
hour for a whole month. He spoke so little, however, that it 
was impossible to tell how much he understood, although he 
seemed to enjoy all that went on. He was so quiet, so sadly 
gentle, that he gave no trouble of any sort, and after the first 
few minutes of a fresh appearance, the attention of the scholars 
was rarely distracted by his presence. 

The way in which the master treated him awoke like respect 
in his pupils. Boys and girls were equally ready to make room 
for him on their forms, and any one of the latter who had by 
some kind attention awakened the watery glint of a smile on the 
melancholy features of the troubled man, would boast of her 
success. Hence it came that the neighborhood of Portlossie was 
the one spot in the county where a person of weak intellect or 
peculiar appearance might go about free of insult. 

The peculiar sentence the laird so often uttered was the only 
one he invariably spoke with definite clearness. In every other 
attempt at speech he was liable to be assailed by an often recur- 
ring impediment, during the continuance of which he could 
compass but a word here and there, often betaking himself, in 
the agony of suppressed utterance, to the most extravagant 
gestures, with which he would sometimes succeed in so supple- 
menting his words as to render his meaning intelligible. 

The two boys representing the earth and the moon had 
returned to their places in the class, and Mr. Graham had gone 
on to give a description of the moon, in which he had necessarily 
mentioned the enormous height of her mountains as compared 
with those of the earth. But in the course of asking some 
questions, he found a need of further explanation, and therefore 
once more required the services of the boy-sun and boy-moon. 



518 GEORGE MacDONALD 

The moment the latter, however, began to describe his circle 
around the former, Mr. Stewart stepped gravely up to him, and 
laying hold of his hand, led him back to his station in the class ; 
then, turning first one shoulder, then, the other to the company, 
so as to attract attention to his hump, uttered the single word 
Mountain, and took on himself the |)art of the moon, proceeding 
to revolve in the circle which represented her orbit. Several of 
the boys and girls smiled, but no one laughed, for Mr. Graham's 
gravity maintained theirs. Without remark, he used the mad 
laird for a moon to the end of his explanation. 

Mr. Stewart remained in the school all the morning, stood up 
with every class Mr. Graham taught, and in the intervals sat, 
with book or slate before him, still as a Brahmin on the fancied 
verge of his reabsorption, save that he murmured to himself 
now and then : 

" I dinna ken whaur I cam frae." 

When his pupils dispersed for dinner, Mr. Graham invited 
him to go to his house and share his homely meal ; but with 
polished gesture and broken speech, Mr. Stewart declined, 
walked away towards the town, and was seen no more that 
afternoon. 

The next day, the day of the Resurrection, rose glorious from 
its sepulcher of sea-fog and drizzle. It had poured all night 
long, but at sunrise the clouds had broken and scattered, and 
the air was the purer for the cleansing rain, while the earth 
shone with that peculiar luster which follows the weeping which 
has endured its appointed night. The larks were at it again, 
singing as if their hearts would break for joy as they hovered in 
brooding exultation over the song of the future ; for their nests 
beneath hoarded a wealth of larks for summers to come. Espe- 
cially about the old church — half buried in the ancient trees of 
Lossie House, the birds that day were jubilant ; their throats 
seemed too narrow to let out the joyful air that filled all their 
hollow bones and quills ; they sang as if they must sing, or choke 
with too much gladness. Beyond the short spire and its shin- 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 519 

ing cock, rose the balls and stars and arrowy vanes of the House, 
glittering in gold and sunshine. 

The inward hush of the resurrection, broken only by the 
prophetic birds, the poets of the groaning and travailing crea- 
tion, held time and space as in a trance ; and the center from 
which radiated both the hush and the caroling expectation 
seemed to Alexander Graham to be the churchyard in which 
he was now walking in the cool of the morning. It was more 
carefully kept than most Scottish churchyards, and yet was not 
too trim : Nature had a word in the affair — was allowed her 
part of mourning, in long grass and moss and the crumbling 
away of stone. The wholesomeness of decay, which both in 
nature and humanity is but the miry road back to life, was 
not unrecognized here; there was nothing of the hideous 
attempt to hide death in the garments of life. The master 
walked about gently, now stopping to read some well-known 
inscription and ponder for a moment over the words ; and now 
wandering across the stoneless mounds, content to be forgotten 
by all but those who loved the departed. At length he seated 
himself on a slat by the side of the mound that rose but yes- 
terday; it was sculptured with symbols of decay — needless 
surely where the originals lay about the mouth of every newly 
opened grave, and as surely ill-befitting the precincts of a 
church whose indwelling gospel is of life victorious over death ! 

" What are these stones," he said to himself, " but monu- 
ments to oblivion ? They are not memorials of the dead, but 
memorials of the forgetfulness of the living. How vain it is to 
send a poor forsaken name, like the title-page of a lost book, 
down the careless stream of time! Let me serve my genera- 
tion, and let God remember me ! " 

The morning wore on ; the sun rose higher and higher. He 
drew from his pocket the Nosce Teipsum of Sir John Davies, and 
was still reading, in quiet enjoyment of the fine logic of the 
lawyer-poet, when he heard the church key, in the trembling 
hand of Jonathan Auld, the sexton, jar feebly battling with 
the reluctant lock. Soon the people began to gather, mostly in 



520 GEORGE MacDONALD 

groups and couples. At length came solitary Miss Horn, 
whom the neighbors, from respect to her sorrow, had left to 
walk alone.^ But Mr. Graham went to meet her, and accom- 
panied her into the church. 

It was a cruciform building, as old as the vanished monas- 
tery, and the burial place of generations of noble blood ; the 
dust of royalty even lay under its floor. A knight of stone 
reclined cross-legged in a niche with an arched Norman canopy 
in one of the walls, the rest of which was nearly encased in 
large tablets of white marble, for at his foot lay the ashes of 
barons and earls whose title was extinct, and whose lands had 
been inherited by the family of Lossie. Inside as well as out- 
side of the church the ground had risen with the dust of 
generations, so that the walls were low; and heavy galleries 
having been erected in parts, the place was filled with shadowy 
recesses and haunted with glooms. 

From a window in the square pew where he sat, so small and 
low that he had to bend his head to look out of it, the school- 
master could see a rivulet of sunshine streaming through 
between two upright grave-stones, and glorifying the long grass 
of a neglected mound that lay close to the wall under the wintry 
drip from the eaves ; when he raised his head, the church looked 
very dark. The best way there to preach the Resurrection, he 
thought, would be to contrast the sepulchral gloom of the church, 
its dreary psalms and drearier sermons, with the sunlight on the 
graves, the lark-filled sky, and the wind blowing where it listed. 
But although the minister was a young man of the commonest 
order, educated to the church that he might eat bread, hence a 
mere willing slave to the beck of his lord and master the patron, 
and but a parrot in the pulpit, the schoolmaster not only en- 
deavored to pour his feelings and desires into the mold of 
his prayers, but listened to the sermon with a countenance that 
revealed no distaste for the weak and unsavory broth ladled 
out to him to nourish his soul withal. When, however, the serv- 
ice — though whose purposes the aff^air could be supposed to 
serve except those of Mr. Cairns himself, would have been a 



EXTRACTS FROM '•MALCOLM'' 521 

curious question — was over, he did breathe a sigh of rehef ; 
and when he stepped out into the sun and wind which had 
been shining and blowing all the time of the dreary ceremony, 
he wondered whether the larks might not have had the best of 
it in the God-praising that had been going on for two slow- 
paced hours. Yet, having been so long used to the sort of 
thing, he did not mind it half so much as his friend Malcolm, 
who found the Sunday observances an unspeakable weariness 
to both flesh and spirit. 

On the present occasion, however, Malcolm did not find the 
said observances dreary, for he observed nothing but the vision 
which radiated from the dusk of the small gallery forming 
Lossie pew, directly opposite the Norman canopy and stone cru- 
sader. Unconventional, careless girl as Lady Florimel had 
hitherto shown herself to him, he saw her sit that morning like 
the proudest of her race, alone, and, to all appearance, unaware 
of a single other person's being in the church besides herself 
She manifested no interest in what was going on, nor indeed 
felt any — how could she ? — never parted her lips to sing ; sat 
during the prayer; and throughout the sermon seemed to Mal- 
colm not once to move her eyes from the carved crusader. 
When all was over, she still sat motionless — sat until the last 
old woman had hobbled out. Then she rose, walked slowly 
from the gloom of the church, flashed into the glow of the 
churchyard, gleamed across it to a private door in the wall, 
which a servant held for her, and vanished. If, a moment 
after, the notes of a merry song invaded the ears of those who 
yet lingered, who could dare suspect that proudly sedate 
damsel thus suddenly breaking the ice of her public behavior ? 

For a mere schoolgirl she had certainly done the lady's part 
well. What she wore I do not exactly know; nor would it 
perhaps be well to describe what might seem grotesque to such 
prejudiced readers as have no judgment beyond the fashions 
of the day. But I will not let pass the opportunity of remind- 
ing them how sadly old-fashioned we of the present hour also 
look in the eyes of those equally infallible judges who have 



622 GEORGE MacDONALD 

been in dread procession toward us ever since we began to 
be — our posterity — -judges who perhaps will doubt with a smile 
whether we even knew what love was, or ever had a dream of 
the grandeur they are on the point of grasping. But at least 
bethink yourselves, dear posterity ; we have not ceased because 
you have begun. 

Out of the church the blind Duncan strode with long, con- 
fident strides. He had no staff to aid him, for he never carried 
one when in his best clothes ; but he leaned proudly on Mal- 
colm's arm, if one who walked so erect could be said to lean. 
He had adorned his bonnet the autumn before with a sprig of 
the large purple heather, but every bell had fallen from it, 
leaving only the naked spray, pitiful analogue of the whole 
withered exterior of which it formed part. His sporran, how- 
ever, hid the stained front of his kilt, and his Sunday coat had 
been new within ten years — the gift of certain ladies of Port- 
lossie, some of whom, to whose lowland eyes the kilt was 
obnoxious, would have added a pair of trousers, had not Miss 
Horn stoutly opposed them, confident that Duncan would 
regard the present as an insult. And she was right ; for rather 
than wear anything instead of the philibeg, Duncan would 
have plaited himself one with his own blind fingers out of an 
old sack. Indeed, although the trews were never at any time 
unknown in the Highlands, Duncan had always regarded them 
as effeminate, and especially in his lowland exile would have 
looked upon the wearing of them as a disgrace to his highland 
birth. 

*' Tat wass a fery coot sairmon to-day, Malcolm," he said, as 
they stepped from the churchyard upon the road. 

Malcolm, knowing well whither conversation on the subject 
would lead, made no reply. His grandfather, finding him 
silent, iterated his remark, with the addition : 

" Put how could it pe a paad one, you'll pe thinking, my 
poy, when he'd pe hafing such a text to keep him straight." 

Malcolm continued silent, for a good many people were within 
hearing whom he did not wish to see amused with the remarks 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 523 

certain to follow any he could make. But Mr. Graham, who 
happened to be walking near the old man on the other side, 
out of pure politeness made a partial response. 

" Yes, Mr. MacPhail," he said, " it was a grand text." 

" Yes, and it wass'U pe a cran' sairmon," persisted Duncan. 
" ' Fenchence is mine — I will repay.' Ta Lord loves fench- 
ence. It's a fine thing, fenchence. To make ta wicked know 
tat tey'll pe peing put men ! Yes ; ta Lord will slay ta wicked. 
Ta Lord will gif ta honest man fenchence upon his enemies. 
It wass a cran' sairmon ! " 

" Don't you think vengeance a very dreadful thing, Mr. Mac- 
Phail ? " said the schoolmaster. 

" Yes, for ta von tat'll pe in ta wrong — I wish ta fenchence 
was mine ! " he added with a loud sigh. 

" But the Lord doesn't think any of us fit to be trusted with 
it, and so keeps it to himself, you see." 

" Yes ; and tat'll pe pecause it'll pe too coot to be gifing to 
another. And some people would be walk of heart, and be 
letting teir enemies co." 

" I suspect it's for the opposite reason, Mr. MacPhail : we 
would go much too far, making no allowances, causing the 
innocent to suffer along with the guilty, neither giving fair 
play nor avoiding cruelty — and indeed " 

" No fear ! " interrupted Duncan, eagerly — " no fear, when ta 
wrong wass as larch as Morven ! " 

In the sermon there had not been one word as to St. Paul's 
design in quoting the text. It had been but a theatrical setting 
forth of the vengeance of God upon sin, illustrated with several 
common tales of the discovery of murder by strange means — a 
sermon after Duncan's own heart ; and nothing but the way in 
which he now snuffed the wind, with head thrown back and 
nostrils dilated, could have given an adequate idea of how 
much he enjoyed the recollection of it. 

Mr. Graham had for many years believed that he must have 
some personal wrongs to brood over — wrongs, probably, to 
which were to be attributed his loneliness and exile ; but of such 



524 GEORGE MacDONALD 

Duncan had never spoken, uttering no maledictions except 
against the real or imagined foes of his family. 

The master placed so little value on any possible results of 
mere argument, and had indeed so little faith in any words 
except such as came hot from the heart, that he said no more, 
but, with an invitation to Malcolm to visit him in the evening, 
wished them good day, and turned in at his own door. 

On Sundays, Malcolm was always more or less annoyed by 
the obtrusive presence of his arms and legs, accompanied by a 
vague feeling that, at any moment, and no warning given, they 
might, with some insane and irrepressible flourish, break the 
Sabbath on their own account, and degrade him in the eyes of 
his fellow-townsmen, who seemed all silently watching how he 
bore the restraints of the holy day. It must be conceded, how- 
ever, that the discomfort had quite as much to do with his 
Sunday clothes as with the Sabbath day, and that it interfered 
but little with an altogether peculiar calm which appeared to 
him to belong in its own right to the Sunday, whether its light 
flowed in the sunny cataracts of June, or oozed through the 
spongy clouds of November. 

As he walked again to the Alton, or Old Town, in the even- 
ing, the filmy floats of white in the lofty blue, the droop of the 
long dark grass by the side of the short brown corn, the shadows 
pointing like all lengthening shadows toward the quarter of 
hope, the yellow glory filling the air and paling the green 
below, the unseen larks hanging aloft — like air-pitcher-plants 
that overflowed in song — like electric jars emptying themselves 
of the sweet thunder of bliss in the flashing of wings and the 
trembling of melodious throats ; these were indeed of the sum- 
mer — but the cup of rest had been poured out upon them ; the 
Sabbath brooded like an embodied peace over the earth, and 
under its wings they grew sevenfold peaceful — with a peace 
that might be felt, like the hand of a mother pressed upon the 
half-sleeping child. The rusted iron cross on the eastern gable 
of the old church stood glowing lusterless in the westering sun ; 



EXTBACT8 FROM '' MALGOLW 525 

while the gilded vane, whose business was the wind, creaked 
radiantly this way and that, in the flaws from the region of 
the sunset ; its shadow flickered soft on the new grave, where 
the grass of the wounded sod was drooping. Again seated on 
a neighboring stone, Malcolm found his friend. 

" See," said the schoolmaster as the fisherman sat down beside 
him, " how the shadow from one grave stretches like an arm 
to embrace another ! In this light the churchyard seems the 
very birthplace of shadows. See them flowing out of the tombs 
as from fountains, to overflow the world ! Does the morning or 
the evening light suit such a place best, Malcolm? " 

The pupil thought for a while. 

" The evenin' licht, sir," he answered at length ; " for 3''e see 
the sun's deein' like, an' deith's like a fa'in' asleep, an' the 
grave's the bed, an' the sod's the bed-claes, an' there's a long 
nicht to the fore." 

" Are ye sure o' that, Malcolm ? " 

" It's the wye folk thinks an' says aboot it, sir." 

" Or maybe doesna think, an' only says ? " 

" Maybe, sir ; I dinna ken." 

" Come here, Malcolm," said Mr. Graham, and took him by 
the arm, and led him towards the east end of the church, where 
a few tombstones were crowded against the wall, as if they 
would press close to a place they might not enter. 

" Read that," he said, pointing to a flat stone, where every 
hollow letter was shown in high relief by the growth in it of a 
lovely moss. The rest of the stone was rich in gray and green 
and brown lichens, but only in the letters grew the bright moss : 
the inscription stood as it were in the hand of Nature herself — 
" He is not here; he is risen.'' 

While Malcolm gazed, trying to think what his master would 
have him think, the latter resumed. 

" If he is risen — if the sun is up, Malcolm — then the morning 
and not the evening is the season for the place of tombs ; the 
morning when the shadows are shortening and separating, not 
the evening when they are growing all into one. I used to love 



526 GEORGE MacDONALB 

the churchyard best in the evening, when the past was more to 
me than the future ; now I visit it almost every bright summer 
morning, and only occasionally at night." 

" But, sir, isna deith a dreidfu' thing ? " said Malcolm. 

" That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate, or as 
the will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread ; but if God 
be light, then death itself must be full of splendor — a splendor 
probably too keen for our eyes to receive." 

" But there's the deein' itsel' ; isna that fearsome ? It's that 
I wad be fleyed at." 

" I don't see why it should be. It's the want of a God that 
makes it dreadful, and you will be greatly to blame, Malcolm, 
if you haven't found your God by the time you have to 
die." 

The next morning rose as lovely as if the mantle of the 
departing Resurrection-day had fallen upon it. Malcolm rose 
with it, hastened to his boat, and pulled out into the bay for an 
hour or two's fishing. Nearly opposite the great conglomerate 
rock at the western end of the dune, called the Bored Craig 
{Perforated Crag) because of a large hole that went right through 
it, he began to draw in his line. Glancing shoreward as he 
leaned over the gunwale, he spied at the foot of the rock, near 
the opening, a figure in white, seated, with bowed head. It was 
of course the mysterious lady, whom he had twice before seen 
thereabout at this unlikely, if not untimely hour ; but with yes- 
terday fresh in his mind, how could he fail to see in her an 
angel of the resurrection waiting at the sepulcher to tell the 
glad news that the Lord was risen ? 

Many were the glances he cast shoreward as he re-baited his 
line, and, having thrown it again into the water, sat waiting 
until it should be time to fire the swivel. Still the lady sat on, 
in her whiteness a creature of the dawn, without even lifting 
her head. At length, having added a few more fishes to the 
little heap in the bottom of his boat, and finding his watch bear 
witness that the hour was at hand, he seated himself on his 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 527 

thwart, and rowed lustily to the shore, his bosom filled with the 
hope of yet another sight of the lovely face, and another hear- 
ing of the sweet English voice and speech. But the very first 
time he turned his head to look, he saw but the sloping foot of 
the rock sink bare into the shore. No white-robed angel sat 
at the gate of the resurrection ; no moving thing was visible on 
the far-vacant sands. When he reached the top of the dune, 
there was no living creature beyond but a few sheep feeding 
on the thin grass. He fired the gun, rowed back to the Seaton, 
ate his breakfast, and set out to carry the best of his fish to the 
House. . . . 

The garden was a curious, old-fashioned place with high 
hedges, and close alleys of trees, where two might have wan- 
dered long without meeting, and it was some time before he 
found any hint of the presence of the marquis. At length, how- 
ever, he heard voices, and following the sound, walked along 
one of the alleys till he came to a little arbor, where he discov- 
ered the marquis seated, and, to his surprise, the white-robed 
lady of the sands beside him. A great deer-hound at his mas- 
ter's feet was bristling his mane, and baring his eje-teeth with 
a growl, but the girl had a hold of his collar. 

" Who are you ? " asked the marquis rather grufily, as if he 
had never seen him before. 

" I beg yer lordship's pardon," said Malcolm, " but they telled 
me yer lordship wantit to see me, and sent me to the flooer- 
garden. Will I gang, or will I bide ? " 

The marquis looked at him for a moment, frowningly, and 
made no reply. But the frown gradually relaxed before Mal- 
colm's modest but unflinching gaze, and the shadow of a smile 
slowly usurped its place. He still kept silent, however. 

" Am I to gang or bide, my lord ? " repeated Malcolm. 

" Can't you wait for an answer ? " 

" As lang's yer lordship likes. Will I gang an' walk aboot, 
mem — my leddy, till his lordship's made up his min' ? Wad 
that please him, duv ye think ? " he said, in the tone of one 
who seeks advice. 



52'8 QBOUGE MacDONALD 

But the girl only smiled, and the marquis said, " Go to the 
devil." 

"I maun luik to yer lordship for the necessar' directions," 
rejoined Malcolm. 

" Your tongue's long enough to inquire as you go," said the 
marquis. 

A reply in the same strain rushed to Malcolm's lips, but he 
checked himself in time, and stood silent, with his bonnet in 
his hand, fronting the two. The marquis sat gazing as if he 
had nothing to say to him, but after a few moments the lady 
spoke — not to Malcolm, however. 

" Is there any danger in boating here, papa ? " she said. 

" Not more, I daresay, than there ought to be," replied the 
marquis listlessly. " Why do you ask ? " 

" Because I should so like a row ! I want to see how the 
shore looks to the mermaids." 

" Well, I will take you some day, if we can find a proper 
boat." 

" Is yours a proper boat ? " she asked, turning to Malcolm 
with a sparkle of fun in her eyes. 

" That depen's on my lord's definition o' proper" 

" Definition ! " repeated the marquis. 

" Is 't ower lang a word, my lord ? " asked Malcolm. 

The marquis only smiled. 

" I ken what ye mean. It's a strange word in a fisher-lad's 
mou', ye think. But what for should na a fisher-lad hae a 
smatterin' o' loagic, my lord ? For Greek or Laitin there's but 
sma' opportunity o' exerceese in oor pairts ; but for loagic, a 
fisher-body may aye baud his han' in i' that. He can aye be 
tryin' 't upo' 's wife, or 's guid-mother, or upo' 's boat, or upo' 
the fish whan they winna tak. Loagic wad save a heap o' 
cursin' an' ill words — amo' the fisher-fowk, I mean, my 
lord." 

" Have you been to college ? " 

"Na, my lord— the mair's the pity! But I've been to the 
school sin' ever I can min'." 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 629 

" Do they teach logic there ? " 

" A kin' o' 't. Mr. Graham sets us to try oor han' whiles — 
jist to mak 's a bit gleg {quick and keen), ye ken." 

" You don't mean you go to school still ? " 

" I dinna gang reg'lar ; but I gang as aften as Mr. Graham 
wants me to help him, an' I aye gether something." 

" So it's schoolmaster you are as well as fisherman ? Two 
strings to your bow ! — Who pays you for teaching ? " 

" Ow ! naebody. Wha wad pay me for that ? " 

" Why, the schoolmaster." 

" Na, but that wad be an affront, my lord ! " 

" How can you afford the time for nothing ? " 

"The time comes to little, compairt wi' what Mr. Graham 
gies me i' the lang forenichts — i' the winter time, ye ken, my 
lord, whan the sea's whiles ower contumahcious to be meddlet 
muckle wi'." 

" But you have to support your grandfather." 

" My gran'father wad be ill-pleased to hear ye say 't, my lord. 
He's terrible independent ; an' what wi' his pipes, an' his lamps, 
an' his shop, he could keep's baith. It's no muckle the likes o' 
us wants. He winna lat me gang far to the fishin', so that I 
hae the mair time to read an' gang to Mr. Graham." 

As the youth spoke, the marquis eyed him with apparently 
growing interest. 

"But you haven't told me whether your boat is a proper 
one," said the lady. 

" Proper eneuch, mem, for what's required o' her. She taks 
guid fish." 

" But is it a proper boat for me to have a row in ? " 

" No wi' that goon on, mem, as I telled ye afore." 

" The water won't get in, will it ? " 

" No more than's easy gotten oot again." 

" Do you ever put up a sail ? " 

" Whiles — a wee bit o' a lug-sail." 

" Nonsense, Flory ! " said the marquis. " I'll see about it." 
Then, turning to Malcolm : 
s. M. — 34 



530 GEORGE MagDONALD 

" You may go," he said. " When I want you I will send for 
you." 

Malcolm thought with himself that he had sent for him this 
time before he wanted him ; but he made his bow, and departed 
— not without disappointment, for he had expected the marquis 
to say something about his grandfather going to the house with 
his pipes, a request he would fain have carried to the old man 
to gladden his heart withal. 

Lord Lossie had been one of the boon companions of the 
Prince of Wales — considerably higher in type, it is true, yet 
low enough to accept usage for law, and measure his obligation 
by the custom of his peers. Duty merely amounted to what was 
expected of him, and honor, the flitting shadow of the garment 
of truth, was his sole divinity. Still he had a heart, and it 
would speak — so long at least as the object affecting it was 
present. But alas! it had no memory. Like the unjust judge, 
he might redress a wrong that cried to him, but out of sight 
and hearing it had for him no existence. To a man he would 
not have told a deliberate lie — except, indeed, a woman was in 
the case ; but to women he had lied enough to sink the whole ship 
of fools. Nevertheless, had the accusing angel himself called him 
a liar, he would have instantly offered him his choice of weapons. 

There was in him by nature, however, a certain generosity 
which all the vice he had shared in had not quenched. Over- 
bearing, he was not yet too overbearing to appreciate a manly 
carriage, and had been pleased with what some would have 
considered the boorishness of Malcolm's behavior — such not 
perceiving that it had the same source as the true aristocratic 
bearing — namely, a certain unselfish confidence which is the 
mother of dignity. 

He had, of course, been a spendthrift — and so much the 
better, being otherwise what he was ; for a cautious and frugal 
voluptuary is about the lowest style of man. Hence he had 
never been out of difficulties, and when, a year or so agone, he 
succeeded to his brother's marquisate, he was, notwithstanding 
his enlarged income, far too much involved to hope any imme- 



EXTBAGT8 FROM ''MALCOLM'' 531 

diate rescue from them. His new property, however, would 
afford him a refuge from troublesome creditors ; there he might 
also avoid expenditure for a season, and perhaps rally the 
forces of a dissolute life ; the place was not new to him, having, 
some twenty years before, spent nearly twelve months there, of 
which time the recollections were not altogether unpleasant. 
Weighing all these things he had made up his mind, and here 
he was at Lossie House. 

The marquis was about fifty years of age, more worn than 
his years would account for, yet younger than his years in 
expression, for his conscience had never bitten him very deep. 
He was middle-sized, broad-shouldered but rather thin, with 
fine features of the aquiline Greek type, light-blue hazy eyes, 
and fair hair, slightly curling and streaked with gray. His 
manners were those of one polite for his own sake. To his 
remote inferiors he was kind — would even encourage them to 
liberties, but might in turn take greater with them than they 
might find agreeable. He was fond of animals— ^would sit for 
an hour stroking the head of Demon, his great Irish deerhound ; 
but at other times would tease him to a wrath which touched 
the verge of dangerous. He was fond of practical jokes, and 
would not hesitate to indulge himself even in such as were 
incompatible with any genuine refinement : the sort had been 
in vogue in his merrier days, and Lord Lossie had ever been one 
of the most fertile in inventing and loudest in enjoying them. 
For the rest, if he was easily enraged, he was readily appeased ; 
could drink a great deal, but was no drunkard ; and held as his 
creed that a God had probably made the world and set it going, 
but that he did not care a brass farthing, as he phrased it, how 
it went on, or what such an insignificant being as a man did or 
left undone in it. Perhaps he might amuse himself with it, he 
said, but he doubted it. As to men, he believed every man 
loved himself supremely, and therefore was in natural warfare 
with every other man. Concerning women, he professed him- 
self unable to give a definite utterance of any sort — and yet, he 
would add, he had had opportunities. 



532 GEORGE MagDONALD 

The mother of Florimel had died when she was a mere child, 
and from that time she had been at school until her father 
brought her away to share his fresh honors. She knew little; 
that little was not correct, and, had it been, would have yet 
been of small value. At school she had been under many laws, 
and had felt their slavery ; she was now in the third heaven of 
delight with her liberty. But the worst of foolish laws is, that 
when the insurgent spirit casts them off, it is but too ready 
to cast away with them the genial self-restraint which these 
fretting trammels have smothered beneath them. 

Her father regarded her as a child of whom it was enough to 
require that she should keep out of mischief He said to him- 
self now and then that he must find a governess for her ; but as 
yet he had not begun to look for one. Meantime he neither 
exercised the needful authority over her, nor treated her as a 
companion. His was a shallow nature, never very pleasantly 
conscious of itself except in the whirl of excitement and the 
glitter of crossing lights ; with a lovely daughter by his side, he 
neither sought to search into her being, nor to aid its unfold- 
ing, but sat brooding over past pleasures, or fancying others yet 
in store for him — lost in the dull flow of life along the lazy 
reach to whose mire its once tumultuous torrent had now 
descended. But, indeed, what could such a man have done for 
the education of a young girl? How many of the qualities 
he understood and enjoyed in women could he desire to see 
developed in his daughter? There was yet enough of the 
father in him to expect those qualities in her to which in other 
women he had been an insidious foe; but had he not done 
what in him lay to destroy his right of claiming such from 
her? 

So Lady Florimel was running wild, and enjoying it. As 
long as- she made her appearance at meals, and looked happy, 
her father would give himself no trouble about her. How he 
himself managed to live in those first days without company — 
what he thought about or speculated upon, it were hard to say. 
All he could be said to do was to ride here and there over the 



EXTBACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 533 

estate with his steward, Mr. Crathie, knowing little and caring 
less about farming, or crojDS, or cattle. He had by this time, 
however, invited a few friends to visit him, and expected their 
arrival before long. 

" How do you like this dull life, Flory ? " he said, as they 
walked up the garden to breakfast. 

" Dull, papa ! " she returned. " You never were at a girls' 
school, or you wouldn't call this dull. It is the merriest life in 
the world. To go where you like, and have miles of room ! 
And such room ! It's the loveliest place in the world, papa ! " 

He smiled a small, satisfied smile, and, stooping, stroked his 
Demon. 

The home season of the herring-fishery was to commence a 
few days after the occurrences last recorded. The boats had all 
returned from other stations, and the little harbor was one crowd 
of stumpy masts, each with its halyard, the sole cordage visible, 
rove through the top of it, for the hoisting of a lug sail, tanned 
to a rich red brown. From this underwood towered aloft the 
masts of a coasting schooner, discharging its load of coal at the 
little quay. Other boats lay drawn up on the beach in front of 
the Seaton, and beyond it on the other side of the burn. Men 
and women were busy with the brown nets, laying them out on 
the short grass of the shore, mending them with netting-needles 
like small shuttles, carrying huge burdens of them on their 
shoulders in the hot sunlight; others were mending, calking, 
or tarring their boats, and looking to their various fittings. All 
was preparation for the new venture in their own waters, and 
everything went merrily and hopefully. Wives who had not 
accompanied their husbands now had them home again, and 
their anxieties would henceforth endure but for a night— joy 
would come with the red sails in the morning ; lovers were once 
more together, the one great dread broken into a hundred little 
questioning fears ; mothers had their sons again, to w^atch with 
loving eyes as they swung their slow limbs at their labor, or in 
the evenings sauntered about, hands in pockets, pipe in mouth, 



534 GEORGE MagDONALD 

and blue bonnet cast carelessly on the head ; it was almost a 
single family, bound together by a network of intermarriages so 
intricate as to render it impossible for any one who did not 
belong to the community to follow the threads or read the design 
of the social tracery. 

And while the Seaton swarmed with " the goings on of life," 
the town of Portlossie lay above it still as a country hamlet, with 
more odors than people about ; of people it was seldom, indeed, 
that three were to be spied at once in the wide street, while of 
odors you would always encounter a smell of leather from the 
saddler's shop, and a mingled message of bacon and cheese from 
the very general dealer's — in whose window hung what seemed 
three hams, and only he who looked twice would discover that 
the middle object was no ham, but a violin — while at every 
corner lurked a scent of gillyflowers and southernwood. Idly 
supreme, Portlossie, the upper, looked down in condescension, 
that is in half-concealed contempt, on the ant-heap below it. 

The evening arrived on which the greater part of the boats 
was to put off for the first assay. Malcolm would have made 
one in the little fleet, for he belonged to his friend Joseph Mair's 
crew, had it not been found impossible to get the new boat 
ready before the following evening ; whence, for this once more, 
he was still his own master, with one more chance of a pleasure 
for which he had been on the watch ever since Lady Florimel 
had spoken of having a row in his boat. True, it was not often 
she appeared on the shore in the evening ; nevertheless he kept 
watching the dune with his keen eyes, for he had hinted to Mrs. 
Courthope that perhaps her young lady would like to see the 
boats go out. 

Although it was the fiftieth time his eyes had swept the links 
in vague hope, he could hardly believe their testimony when 
now at length he spied a form, which could only be hers, look- 
ing seaward from the slope, as still as a sphinx on Egyptian 
sands. • 

He sauntered slowly towards her by the landward side of the 
dune, gathering on his way a handful of the reddest daisies he 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 585 

could find ; then, ascending the sand-hill, approached her along 
the top. 

" Saw ye ever sic gowans in yer life, my leddy ? " he said, 
holding out his posy. 

" Is that what you call them ? " she returned. 

" Ow ay, my leddy — daisies ye ca' them. I dinna ken but 
yours is the bonnier name o' the twa — gien it be what Mr. 
Graham tells me the auld poet Chaucer maks o' 't." 

"What is that?" 

" Ow, jist the een o' the day — the day^s eyes, ye ken. They're 
sma' een for sic a great face, but syne there's a lot o' them to 
mak up for that. They've begun to close a'ready, but the mair 
they close the bonnier they luik, wi' their bits o' screwed-up 
mooies {J^ittle mouths). But saw ye ever sic reid anes, or ony sic 
a size, my leddy ? " 

" I don't think I ever did. What is the reason they are so 
large and red?" 

" I dinna ken. There canna be muckle nourishment in sic 
a thin soil, but there maun be something that agrees wi' them. 
It's the same a' roon' aboot here." 

Lady Florimel sat looking at the daisies, and Malcolm stood 
a few yards off, watching for the first of the red sails, which 
must soon show themselves, creeping out on the ebb tide. Nor 
had he waited long before a boat appeared, then another and 
another — six huge oars, ponderous to toil withal, urging each 
from the shelter of the harbor out into the wide weltering plain. 
The fishing-boat of that time was not decked as now, and each, 
with every lift of its bows, revealed to their eyes a gaping hol- 
low, ready, if a towering billow should break above it, to be 
filled with sudden death. One by one the whole fleet crept 
out, and ever as they gained the breeze, up went the red sails, 
and filled : aside leaned every boat from the wind, and went 
dancing away over the frolicking billows towards the sunset, 
its sails, deep-dyed in oak-bark, shining redder and redder in 
the growing redness of the sinking sun. 

Nor did Portlossie alone send out her boats, like huge sea- 



536 QEOBGE MacDONALD 

birds warring on the live treasures of the deep ; from beyond 
the headlands east and west, out they glided on slow red wing 
— from Scaurnose, from Sandend, from Clamrock, from the vil- 
lages all along the coast — spreading as they came, each to its 
work apart through all the laborious night, to rejoin its fellows 
only as home drew them back in the clear gray morning, laden 
and slow with the harvest of the stars. But the night lay be- 
tween, into which they were sailing over waters of heaving 
green that forever kept tossing up roses — a night whose cur- 
tain was a horizon built up of steady blue, but gorgeous with 
passing purple and crimson, and flashing with molten gold. 

Malcolm was not one of those to whom the sea is but a pond 
for fish, and the sky a storehouse of wind and rain, sunshine 
and snow ; he stood for a moment gazing, lost in pleasure. Then 
he turned to Lady Florimel ; she had thrown her daisies on the 
sand, appeared to be deep in her book, and certainly caught 
nothing of the splendor before her beyond the red light on her 
next page. 

" Saw ye ever a bonnier sicht, my leddy ? " said Malcolm. 

She looked up, and saw, and gazed in silence. Her nature 
was full of poetic possibilities ; and now a formless thought 
foreshadowed itself in a feeling she did not understand. Why 
should such a sight as this make her feel sad ? The vital con- 
nection between joy and effort had begun from afar to reveal 
itself with the question she now uttered. 

" What is it all for ? " she asked dreamily, her eyes gazing 
out on the calm ecstasy of color, which seemed to have broken 
the bonds of law and ushered in a new chaos, fit matrix of 
new heavens and new earth. 

" To catch herrin','' answered Malcolm, ignorant of the mood 
that prompted the question, and hence mistaking its purport. 

But a falling doubt had troubled the waters of her soul, and 
through the ripple she could descry it settling into form. She 
was silent for a moment. 

" I want to know," she resumed, " why it looks as if some 
great thing were going on. Why is all this pomp and show ? 



EXTRACTS FROM "MALCOLM'' 537 

Something ought to be at hand. All I see is the catching of a 
few miserable fish ! If it were the eve of a glorious battle, now, 
I could understand it — if those were the little English boats 
rushing to attack the Spanish Armada, for instance. But they 
are only gone to catch fish. Or if they were setting out to dis- 
cover the Isles of the West, the country beyond the sunset ! — 
but this jars." 

" I canna answer ye a' at ance, my leddy," said Malcolm ; " I 
maun tak time to think aboot it. But I ken brawly what ye 
mean." 

Even as he spoke he withdrew, and, descending the mound, 
walked away beyond the bored craig, regardless now of the far- 
lessening sails and the sinking sun. The motes of the twilight 
were multiplying fast as he returned along the shore side of 
the dune, but Lady Florimel had vanished from its crest. He 
ran to the top ; thence, in the dim of the twilight, he saw her 
slow retreating form, phantom-like, almost at the grated door 
of the tunnel, which, like that of a tomb, appeared ready to 
draw her in, and yield her no more. 

" My leddy, my leddy," he cried, " winna ye bide for 't ? " 

He went bounding after her like a deer. She heard him call, 
and stood holding the door half open. 

" It's the battle o' Armageddon, my leddy," he cried, as he 
came within hearing distance. 

" The battle of what ? " she exclaimed, bewildered. " I really 
can't understand your savage Scotch." 

" Hoot, my leddy ! the battle o' Armageddon's no ane o' the 
Scots battles ; it's the battle atween the richt and the wrang, 'at 
ye read aboot i' the buik o' the Revelations." 

" What on earth are you talking about ? " returned Lady 
Florimel in dismay, beginning to fear that her squire was los- 
ing his senses. 

" It's jist what ye was sayin', my leddy ; sic a pomp as yon 
bude to hing abune a gran' battle some gait or ither." 

" What has the catching of fish to do with a battle in the 
Revelations ? " said the girl moving a little within the door. 



638 GEOBGE MACDONALD 

" Weel, my leddy, gien I took in han' to set it furth to ye, I 
wad hae to tell ye a' that Mr. Graham has been learnin' me 
sin' ever I can min'. He says 'at the whole economy o' natur 
is fashiont unco like that o' the kingdom o' haven : its jist a 
gradation o' services, an' the highest en' o' ony animal is to 
contreebute to the life o' ane higher than itsel' ; sae that it's the 
gran' preevilege o' the fish we tak, to be aten by human bein's, 
an' uphaud what's abune them." 

'' That's a poor consolation to the fish," said Lady Florimel. 

" Hoo ken ye that, my leddy ? Ye can tell nearhan' as little 
aboot the hert o' a herrin' — sic as it has — as the herrin' can tell 
aboot yer ain, whilk, I'm thinkin', maun be o' the largest size." 

" How should you know anything about my heart, pray ? " 
she asked, with more amusement than offense. 

" Jist by my ain," answered Malcolm. 

Lady Florimel began to fear she must have allowed the fisher 
lad more liberty than was proper, seeing he dared avow that 
he knew the heart of a lady of her position by his own. But 
indeed Malcolm was wrong, for in the scale of hearts. Lady 
Florimel's was far below his. She stepped quite within the 
door, and was on the point of shutting it, but something about 
the youth restrained her, exciting at least her curiosity ; his 
eyes glowed with a deep, quiet light, and his face, even grand 
at the moment, had a greater influence upon her than she 
knew. Instead, therefore, of interposing the door between them, 
she only kept it poised, ready to fall-to the moment the sanity 
of the youth should become a hair's-breadth more doubtful 
than she already considered it. 

'' It's a' pairt o' ae thing, my leddy," Malcolm resumed. 
" The herrin' 's like the fowk' at cairries the mate an' the 
pooder an' sic like for them 'at does the fechtin'. The hert o' 
the leevin' man's the place whaur the battle's foucht, an' it's SlJQ 
gaein' on an' on there atween God an' Sawtan; an' the fish 
they haud fowk up till 't " 

" Do you mean that the herrings help you to fight for God?'' 
said Lady Florimel with a superior smile. 



EXTRACTS FROM "MALCOLM'' 539 

"Aither for God or for the deevil, my leddy — that depen's 
upo' the fowk themsel's. I say it hauds them up to fecht, an' 
the thing maun be fouchten oot. Fowk to fecht maun live, an' 
the herrin' hauds the Hfe i' them, an' sae the catchin' o' the her- 
rin' comes in to be a pairt o' the battle." 

" Wouldn't it be more sensible to say that the battle is 
between the fishermen and the sea, for the sake of their wives 
and children ? " suggested Lady Florimel supremely. 

" Na, my leddy, it wadna be half sae sensible, for it wadna 
justifee the grandur that hings over the fecht.. The battle wi' 
the sea 's no sae muckle o' an affair. An', 'deed, gien it warna 
that the wives an' the verra weans hae themsel's to fecht i' the 
same battle o' guid an' ill, I dinna see the muckle differ there 
wad be atween them an' the fish, nor what for they sudna ate 
ane anither as the craturs i' the water du. But gien 't be the 
battle I say, there can be no pomp o' sea or sky ower gran' 
for 't ; an' it's a' weel waured {expended) gien it but baud the 
gude anes merry an' strong, an' up to their wark. For that, 
weel may the sun shine a celestial rosy reid, an' weel may the 
boatie row, an' weel may the stars luik doon, blinkin' an' 
luikin' again — ilk ane duin' its bonny pairt to mak a man a 
richt-hetit guid-willed sodger ! " 

Before Malcolm was awake, his lordship had sent for him. 
When he re-entered the sick-chamber, Mr. Glennie had van- 
ished, the table had been removed, and instead of the radiance 
of the wax lights, the cold gleam of a vapor dimmed sun, 
with its sickly blue-white reflex from the widespread snow, 
filled the room. The marquis looked ghastly, but was sipping 
chocolate with a spoon. 

" What w'y are ye the day, my lord ? " asked Malcolm. 

" Nearly well," he answered ; " but those cursed carrion-crows 
are set upon killing me." (Here he uttered a curse.) 

" We'll hae Leddy Florimel sweirin' awfu' gien ye gang on 
that gait, my lord," said Malcolm. 

The marquis laughed feebly. 



640 GEORGE MagDONALD 

" An' what's mair," Malcolm continued, " I doobt they're 
some partic'lar aboot the turn o' their phrases up yonner, my 
lord." 

The marquis looked at him keenly. 

" You don't anticipate that inconvenience for me ? " he said. 
" I'm pretty sure to have my billet where they're not so 
precise." 

" Dinna brak my hert, my lord ! " cried Malcolm, the tears 
rushing to his eyes. 

" I should be sorry to hurt you, Malcolm," rejoined the 
marquis gently, almost tenderly. " I won't go there if I can 
help it. I shouldn't like to break any more hearts. But how 
the devil am I to keep out of it ? Besides, there are people up 
there I don't want to meet ; I have no fancy for being made 
ashamed of myself. The fact is I'm not fit for such company, 
and I don't believe there is any such place. But if there be I 
trust in God there isn't any other, or it will go badly with your 
poor master, Malcolm. It doesn't look like true — now does it ? 
Only such a multitude of things I thought I had done with for- 
ever, keep coming up and grinning at me ! It nearly drives 
me mad, Malcolm — and I would fain die like a gentleman, with 
a cool bow and a sharp face-about." 

" Wadna ye hae a word wi' somebody 'at kens, my lord ? " 
said Malcolm, scarcely able to reply. 

" No," answered the marquis fiercely. " That Cairns is a fool." 

" He's a' that an' mair, my lord. I didna mean him." 

" They're all fools together." 

" Ow, na, my lord ! There's a heap o' them no muckle 
better, it may be ; but ther's guid men and true amang them, 
or the kirk wad hae been wi' Sodom and Gomorrha by this 
time. But it's no a minister I wad hae yer lordship con- 
fair wi'." 

" Who then, Mrs. Courthope ? Eh ? " 

" Ow na, my lord — no Mistress Coorthoup ! She's a guid 
body, but she wadna believe her ain een gien onybody ca'd a 
minister said contrar' to them." 



EXTUA GTS FBOM •' MAL COLM " 641 

" Who the devil do you mean then? " 

" Nae deevil, but an honest man 'at's been his warst enemy 
sae lang's I hae kent him ; Maister Graham, the schuil- 
maister." 

" Pooh ! " said the marquis with a puff. " I'm too old to go 
to school." 

" I dinna ken the man 'at isna a bairn till him, my lord." 

'' In Greek and Latin ? " 

" I' richteousness an' trouth, my lord ; in what's been an' 
what is to be." 

" What ! has he the second sight, like the piper ? " 

" He has the second sight, my lord — but ane 'at gangs a sicht 
farther than my auld daddy's." 

" He could tell me then what's going to become of me? " 

" As weel's ony man, my lord." 

" That's not saying much, I fear." 

" Maybe mair nor ye think, my lord." 

" Well, take him my compliments, and tell him I should like 
to see him," said the marquis, after a pause. 

" He'll come direckly, my lord." 

" Of course he will," said the marquis. 

" Jist as readily, my lord, as he wad gang to ony tramp 'at 
sent for 'im at sic a time," returned Malcolm, who did not relish 
either the remark or its tone. 

" What do you mean by that ? You don't think it such a 
serious affair — do you ? " 

" My lord, ye haena a chance." 

The marquis was dumb. He had actually begun once more 
to buoy himself up with earthly hopes. 

Dreading a recall of his commission, Malcolm slipped from 
the room, sent Mrs. Courthope to take his place, and sped to the 
schoolmaster. The moment ' Mr. Graham heard the marquis's 
message, he rose without a word, and led the way from the cot- 
tage. Hardly a sentence passed between them as they went, for 
they were on a solemn errand. 

" Mr. Graham's here, my lord," said Malcolm. 



542 GEORGE MacDONALD 

" Where ? Not in the room ? " returned the marquis. . 

" Waitin' at the door, my lord." 

" Bah ! You needn't have been so ready. Have you told 
the sexton to get a new spade ? But you may let him in. And 
leave him alone with me." 

Mr. Graham walked gently up to the bedside. 

" Sit down, sir," said the marquis courteously — pleased with 
the calm, self-possessed, unobtrusive bearing of the man. " They 
tell me I'm dying, Mr. Graham." 

" I'm sorry it seems to trouble you, my lord." 

" What ! wouldn't it trouble you, then ? " 

" I don't think so, my lord." 

" Ah ! you're one of the elect, no doubt ! " 

" That's a thing I never did think about, my lord." 

" What do you think about, then ? " 

" About God." 

" And when you die you'll go straight to heaven, of course ! " 

" I don't know, my lord. That's another thing I never trouble 
my head about." 

" Ah ! you're like me then ! I don't care much about going to 
heaven ! What do you care about ? " 

" The will of God. I hope your lordship will say the same." 

" No, I won't. I want my own will." 

" Well, that is to be had, my lord." 

"How?" 

" By taking his for yours, as the better of the two, which it 
must be every way." 

" That's all moonshine." 

" It is light, my lord." 

" Well, I don't mind confessing, if I am to die, I should 
prefer heaven to the other place ; but I trust i have no chance 
of either. Do you now honestly believe there are two such 
places?" 

" I don't know, my lord." 

" You don't know ! And you come here to comfort a dying 
man ! " 



EXTRACTS FROM ''MALCOLM'' 543 

" Your lordship must first tell me what you mean by ' two 
such places.' And as to comfort, going by my notions, I cannot 
tell which you would be more or less comfortable in ; and that, 
I presume, would be the main point with your lordship." 

" And what, pray sir, would be the main point with you ? " 

" To get nearer to God." 

" Well, I can't say I want to get nearer to God. It's little he's 
ever done for me." 

" It's a good deal he has tried to do for you, my lord." 

" Well, who interfered ? Who stood in his way, then ? " 

'' Yourself, my lord." 

" I wasn't aware of it. When did he ever try to do anything 
for me, and I stood in his way ? " 

" When he gave you one of the loveliest of women, my lord," 
said Mr. Graham, with solemn, faltering voice, " and you left her 
to die in neglect, and the child to be brought up by strangers." 

The marquis gave a cry. The unexpected answer had roused 
the slowly gnawing death, and made it bite deeper. 

" What have you to do," he almost screamed, " with my 
affairs ? It was for me to introduce what I chose of them. You 
presume." 

" Pardon me, my lord ; you led me to what I was bound to 
say. Shall I leave you, my lord ? " 

The marquis made no answer. 

" God knows I loved her," he said, after a while, with a 
sigh. 

" You loved her, my lord ? " 

" I did." 

" Love a woman like that, and come to this? " 

" Come to this ! We must all come to this, I fancy, sooner or 
later. Come to what, in the name of Beelzebub ? " 

" That, having loved a woman like her, you are content to 
lose her. In the name of God, have you no desire to see her 
again ? " 

" It would be an awkward meeting," said the marquis. 

His was an old love, alas ! He had not been capable of the 



544 GEORGE MACBONALB 

sort that defies change. It had faded from him until it seemed 
one of the things that are not ! Although his being had once 
glowed in its light, he could now speak of a meeting as awk- 
ward ! 

" Because you wronged her ? " suggested the schoolmaster. 

"Because they lied to me." 

" Which they dared not have done, had you not lied to them 
first." 

" Sir ! " shouted the marquis, with all the voice he had left — 
" God, have mercy ! I cannot punish the scoundrel." 

" The scoundrel is the man who lies, my lord." 

" Were I anywhere else " 

" There would be no good in telling you the truth, my lord. 
You showed her to the world not as the honest wife she was. 
What kind of a lie was that, my lord? Not a white one, 
surely?" 

" You are a coward to speak so to a man who cannot even 
turn on his side to curse you for a base hound. You would not 
dare it but that you know I cannot defend myself." 

" You are right, my lord ; your conduct is indefensible." 

" If I could but get this cursed leg under me, I would throw 
you out of the window." 

" I shall go by the door, my lord. While you hold by your 
sins, your sins will hold by you. If you should want me again, 
I shall be at your lordship's command." 

He rose and left the room, but had not reached his cottage 
before Malcolm overtook him with a second message from his 
master. He turned at once, saying only, " I expected it." 

'' Mr. Graham," said the marquis, looking ghastly, " you must 
have patience with a dying man. I was very rude to you, but 
I was in horrible pain." 

" Don't mention it, my lord. It would be a poor friendship 
that gave way for a rough word." 

" How can you call yourself my friend ? " 
" I should be your friend, my lord, if it were only for your 
wife's sake. She died loving you. I want to send you to her, 



EXTRACTS FROM '' MALCOLM" 545 

my lord. You will allow that, as a gentleman, you at least owe 
her an apology." 

" By Jove, you are right, sir ! Then you really and positively 
believe in the place they call heaven ? " 

" My lord, I believe that those who open their hearts to the 
truth, shall see the light on their friends' faces again, and be 
able to set right what was wrong between them." 

" It's a week too late to talk of setting right ! " 

" Go and tell her you are sorry, my lord — that will be enough 
to her." 

" Ah ! but there's more than her concerned." 

" You are right, my lord. There is another — one who can- 
not be satisfied that the fairest works of his hands, or rather the 
loveliest children of his heart, should be treated as you have 
treated women." 

" But the Deity you talk of " 

" I beg your pardon, my lord. I talked of no deity ; I talked 
of a living Love that gave us birth and calls us his children. 
Your deity I know nothing of." 

" Call him what you please — he won't be put off so easily ! " 

" He won't be put off one jot or one tittle. He will forgive 
anything, but he will pass nothing. Will your wife forgive 
you?" 

" She will — when I explain." 

" Then why should you think the forgiveness of God, which 
created her forgiveness, should be less ? " 

Whether the marquis could grasp the reasoning, may be 
doubtful. 

" Do you really suppose God cares whether a man comes to 
good or ill ? " 

" If he did not, he could not be good himself." 

" Then you don't think a good God would care to punish 
poor wretches like us ? " 

' " Your lordship has not been in the habit of regarding him- 
self as a poor wretch. And, remember, you can't call a child a 
poor wretch without insulting the father of it." 
s, M. — 35 



546 GEOEGE MacDONALD 

" That's quite another thing." 

" But on the wrong side for your argument — seeing the rela- 
tion between God and the poorest creature is infinitely closer 
than that between any father and his child." 

" Then he can't be so hard on him as the parsons say." 

" He will give him absolute justice, which is the only good 
thing. He will spare nothing to bring his children back to 
himself — their sole well-being. What would you do, my lord, 
if you saw your son strike a woman ? " 

" Knock him down and horsewhip him." 

It was Mr. Graham who broke the silence that followed. 

" Are you satisfied with yourself, my lord ? " 

" No, by God ! " 

" You would like to be better ? " 

" I would." 

" Then you are of the same mind with God." 

" Yes ; but I'm not a fool ! It won't do to say I should like 
to be. I must be, and that's not so easy. It's hard to be good. 
I would have a fight for it, but there's no time. How is a poor 
devil to get out of such an infernal scrape ? " 

" Keep the commandments." 

" That's it, of course ; but there's no time, I tell you — at least 
so those cursed doctors will keep telling me." 

" If there were but time to draw another breath, there would 
be time to begin." 

" How am I to begin ? Which am I to begin with ? " 

" There is one commandment which includes all the rest." 

'' Which is that ? " 

" To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." 

" That's cant." 

" After thirty years' trial of it, it is to me the essence of 
wisdom. It has given me a peace which makes life or death 
all but indifferent to me, though I would choose the latter." 

" What am I to believe about him, then ? " 

" You are to believe in him, not about him." 

" I don't understand." 



EXTRACTS FROM "MALCOLM'' 547 

" He is our Lord and Master, Elder Brother, King Saviour, 
the divine Man, the human God ; to believe in him is to give 
ourselves up to him in obedience, to search out his will and do it." 

" But there's no time, I tell you again," the marquis almost 
shrieked. 

" And I tell you, there *is all eternity to do it in. Take him 
for your master, and he will demand nothing of you which you 
are not able to perform. This is the open door to bliss. With 
your last breath you can cry to him, and he will hear you, as 
he heard the thief on the cross who cried to him dying beside 
him. ' Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy king- 
dom.' ' To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' It makes 
my heart swell to think of it, my lord ! No cross-questioning 
of the poor fellow ! No preaching to him ! He just took him 
with him where he was going, to make a man of him." 

" Well, you know something of my history. What would yon 
have me do now ? At once, I mean. What would the person 
you speak of have me do ? " 

" That is not for me to say, my lord." 

" You could give me a hint." 

" No. God is telling you himself For me to presume to tell 
you, would be to interfere with him. What he would have a 
man do, he lets him know in his mind." 

" But what if I had not made up my mind before the last 
came ? " 

" Then I fear he would say to you — ' Depart from me, thou 
worker of iniquity.' " 

"That would be hard when another minute might have 
done it." 

" If another minute would have done it, you would have 
had it." 

A paroxysm of pain followed, during which Mr. Graham 
silently left him. 

The marquis would not have the doctor come near him, and 
when Malcolm entered there was no one in the room but Mrs. 



548 QEOROE MacDONALD 

Courthope. The shadow had crept far along the dial. His 
face had grown ghastly, the skin had sunk to the bones, and 
his eyes stood out as if from much staring into the dark. They 
rested very mournfully on Malcolm for a few moments, and 
then closed softly. 

" Is she come yet ? " he murmured, opening them wide, with 
sudden stare. 

" No, my lord." 

The lids fell again, softly, slowly. 

" Be good to her, Malcolm," he murmured. 

" I wuU, my lord," said Malcolm solemnly. 

Then the eyes opened and looked at him ; something grew 
in them — a light as of love, and drew up after it a tear ; but 
the lips said nothing. The eyelids fell again, and in a minute 
more, Malcolm knew by his breathing that he slept. 

The slow night waned. He woke sometimes, but soon dozed 
off again. The two watched by him till the dawn. It brought 
a still gray morning, without a breath of wind, and warm for 
the season. The marquis appeared a little revived, but was 
hardly able to speak. Mostly by signs he made Malcolm 
understand that he wanted Mr. Graham, but that some one else 
must go for him. Mrs. Courthope went. 

As soon as she was out of the room, he lifted his hand with 
effort, laid feeble hold on Malcolm's jacket, and drawing him 
down, kissed him on the forehead. Malcolm burst into tears, 
and sank weeping by the bedside. 

Mr. Graham, entering a little after, and seeing Malcolm on 
his knees, knelt also, and broke into a prayer. 

" blessed Father ! " he said, " who knowest this thing, so 
strange to us, which we call death, breathe more life into the 
heart of thy dying son, that in the power of life he may front 
death. Lord Christ, who diedst thyself, and in thyself 
knowest it all, heal this man in his sore need — heal him with 
strength to die." 

Came a faint ATnen from the marquis. 

" Thou didst send him into the world ; help him out of it. 



EXTRACTS FROM '•MALCOLM'' 549 

God, we belong to thee utterly. We dying men are thy children, 
O living Father ! Thou art such a father, that thou takest our 
sins from us and throwest them behind thy back. Thou 
cleanest our souls, as thy Son did wash our feet. We hold our 
hearts up to thee ; make them what they must be, Love, 
Life of men, Heart of hearts ! Give thy dying child courage, 
and hope, and peace — the peace of him who overcame all the 
terrors of humanity, even death itself, and liveth for evermore, 
sitting at thy right hand, our God-brother, blessed to all ages — 
amen." 

" Amen ! " murmured the marquis, and slowly lifting his 
hand from the coverlid, he laid it on the head of Malcolm, who 
did not know it was the hand of his father, blessing him ere he 
died. 

" Be good to her," said the marquis once more. 

But Malcolm could not answer for weeping, and the marquis 
was not satisfied. Gathering all his force he said again : 

" Be good to her." 

" I wull, I wull," burst from Malcolm in sobs, and he wailed 
aloud. 

The day wore on, and the afternoon came. Still Lady Flori- 
mel had not arrived, and still the marquis lingered. 

As the gloom of the twilight was deepening into the early 
darkness of the winter night, he opened wide his eyes, and was 
evidently listening. Malcolm could hear nothing ; but the 
light in his master's face grew, and the strain of his listening 
diminished. At length Malcolm became aware of the sound of 
wheels, which came rapidly nearer, till at last the carriage 
swung up to the hall door. A moment, and Lady Florimel 
was flitting across the room. 

" Papa ! papa ! " she cried, and, throwing her arm over him, 
laid her cheek to his. 

The marquis could not return her embrace ; he could only 
receive her into the depths of his shining tearful eyes. 

" Flory ! " he murmured, " I'm going away. I'm going — I've 
got — to make an — apology. Malcolm, be good " 



650 GEOBQE MacBONALD 

The sentence remained unfinished. The light paled from his 
countenance — he had to carry it with him. He was dead. 

Lady Florimel gave a loud cry. Mrs. Courthope ran to her 
assistance. 

" My lady's in a dead faint ! " she whispered, and left the 
room to get help. 

Malcolm lifted Lady Florimel in his great arms, and bore her 
tenderly to her own apartment. There he left her to the care 
of her women, and returned to the chamber of death. 

Meantime Mr. Graham and Mr. Soutar had come. 

When Malcolm re-entered, the schoolmaster took him kindly 
by the arm and said : 

" Malcolm, there can be neither place nor moment fitter for 
the solemn communication I am commissioned to make to 
you ; I have, as in the presence of your dead father, to inform 
you that you are now Marquis of Lossie ; and God forbid you 
should be less worthy as marquis than you have been as 
fisherman ! " 



EDWARD EGGLESTON 

1837 

Edward Eggleston was born of Virginia lineage, in Vevay, Indi- 
ana, on the 10th of December, 1837. His father, a man of fine educa- 
tion, scholarly tastes and acquirements, and locally prominent as a 
lawyer and in public life, died when Edward was but nine years of 
age. One of his last acts was to direct in his will that his law library 
should be exchanged for works of general literature for the cultivation 
of his children's tastes. 

Edward's health was delicate and his education very irregular, but 
he early showed a strong bent for a literary life. He removed to Min- 
nesota in 1857, having already entered the Methodist ministry. He 
served as pastor of churches in several of the leading towns of Minne- 
sota, but he gave up the ministry on account of ill health in 1866, and 
became successively editor of The Little Corporal, and The National 
Sunday School Teacher, at Chicago. 

In 1870 he removed to New York, to become literary editor of the 
Independent, and at the close of that year he became the chief editor 
of the same paper. In 1871 he retired from the Independent, to take 
charge for more than a year of Hearth and Home, and he signalized 
the change by producing his first novel, "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," 
in the columns of the latter paper. Its popularity was very great and 
its sale continues large to the present time. Pirated editions appeared 
in England and in several of the British colonies, and it was trans- 
lated into French, German, and Danish. 

Other novels have followed with varying success. Some of these 
have rivaled " The Hoosier Schoolnlaster " in persistent popularity. In 
1889, Mr. Eggleston published his "History of the United States and 
its People, for the Use of Schools," and in 1890 his "First Book in 
American History," both of which have been very successful. 

Mr. Eggleston worked unremittingly in favor of international copy- 
right, and it was largely due to his eflPorts and untiring zeal that this 
law was finally passed in 1891. His brother authors, in grateful ap- 
preciation of the service he rendered them in this respect, insisted that 
his book, "The Faith Doctor," should be the first to be copyrighted 
551 



552 EDWARD EGGLE8T0N 

under the new law. This has proved to be one of the most popular of 
his works. 

For many years Mr. Eggleston has led a purely literary life, devot- 
ing himself to historical study and to the production of an occasional 
novel. 

Characterization 

Mr. Eggleston's stories have held from the beginning a great popu- 
larity with a large circle of readers, and it has been in many ways 
well deserved. They are full of incident; all of these rapid events 
occur amid scenes almost entirely new to the Eastern reader and the 
new generation of Westerners ; and they have in a high degree the 
element of dialectic speech, which confers upon the personages of the 
story that appearance of reality and individuality for which the novel- 
writer has to watch so keenly and work so hard. 

"The Nation." 

With each new novel the author of " The Hoosier Schoolmaster " 
enlarges his audience and suri^rises old friends by reserve forces un- 
suspected. Sterling integrity of character and high moral motives 
illuminate Dr. Eggleston's fiction and assure its place in the literature 
of America, which is to stand as a worthy reflex of the best thought 
of this age. " New York World. " 

Mr. Eggleston's merits as a writer are fairly well known. He has a 
very pleasant and slightly cynical humor ; he writes with restraint, 
without undue emphasis or exaggeration. He knows the strong side 
of human nature well, and the weak side exceedingly well. 

" London Speakjjr." 

A Struggle for the Mastery' 

(From "The Hoosier Schoolmaster") 

The school closed on Monday evening, as usual. The boys 
had been talking in knots all day. Nothing but the bull-dog 
in the slender resolute young master had kept down the rising 
storm. Let a teacher lose moral support at home, and- he can- 
not long govern a school. Ralph had effectually lost his popu- 
larity in the district ; and the worst of it was that he could not 

^ By permission of the publishers, Orange Judd Company. 



A STRUGGLE FOB THE MASTERY 553 

divine from just what quarter the ill wind came, except that he 
felt sure of Small's agency in it somewhere. Even Hannah had 
slighted him when he called at Mean's, on Monday morning, to 
draw the pittance of pay that was due him. 

He had expected a petition for a holiday on Christmas day. 
Such holidays were deducted from the teacher's time, and it 
was customary for the boys to " turn out " the teacher who 
refused to grant them, by barring him out of the schoolhouse 
on Christmas and New Year's morning. Ralph had intended 
to grant a holiday if it should be asked, but it was not asked. 
Hank Banta was the ringleader in the disaffection, and he had 
managed to draw the surly Bud, who was present this morning, 
into it. It is but fair to say that Bud was in favor of making 
a request before resorting to extreme measures, but he was over- 
ruled. He. gave it as his solemn opinion that the master was 
mighty pert, and they would be beat anyhow some way, but he 
would lick the master fer two cents ef he warn't so slim that 
he'd feel like he was fighting a baby. 

And all that day things looked black. Ralph's countenance 
was cold and hard as stone, and Shocky trembled where he sat 
in front of him. Betsey Short tittered rather more than usual. 
A riot or a murder would have seemed amusing to her. 

School was dismissed, and Ralph, instead of returning to 
the Squire's, set out for the village of Cliffy, a few miles away. 
No one knew what he went for, and some suggested that he 
had "sloped." But Bud said "he warn't that air kind. He 
was one of them air sort as died in ther tracks, was Mr. 
Hartsook. They'd find him on the ground nex' morning, and 
he 'lowed the master war made of air sort of stuff" as would 
burn the dogon'd ole schoolhouse to ashes, or blow it into 
splinters, but what he'd beat. Howsumdever he'd said he was 
a-goin' to help, and help he would ; but all the sinnoo in Golier 
wouldn' be no account agin the cute they was in the head of 
the master." 

But Bud, discouraged as he was with the fear of Ralph's 
"cute," went like a martyr to the stake and took his place with 



554 EDWABD E OGLE ST ON 

the rest in the schoolhouse, at nine o'clock at night. It may 
have been Ralph's intention to have preoccupied the school- 
house, for at ten o'clock Hank Banta was set shaking from head 
to foot at seeing a face that looked like the master's at the win- 
dow. He waked up Bud and told him about it. 

" Well, what are you a-tremblin' about, you coward?" growled 
Bud. " He won't shoot you ; but he'll beat you at this game, 
I'll bet a boss, and me, too, and make us both as 'shamed of 
ourselves as dogs with tin-kittles to their tails. You don't know 
the master, though he did duck you. But he'll larn you a 
good lesson this time, and me too, like as not." And Bud soon 
snored again, but Hank shook with fear every time he looked 
at the blackness outside the windows. He was sure he heard 
footfalls. He would have given anything to have been at 
home. 

When morning came, the pupils began to gather early. A 
few boys who were likely to prove of service in the coming siege 
were admitted through the window, and then everything was 
made fast, and a '' snack " was eaten. 

" How do you 'low he'll git in ? " said Hank, trying to hide 
his fear. 

" How do I 'low ? " said Bud. " I don't 'low nothin' about it. 
You might as well ax me where I 'low the nex' shootin' star is 
a-goin' to drap. Mr. Hartsook's mighty onsartin. But he'll git 
in though, and tan your hide fer you, you see ef he don't. ^ 
he don't blow up the schoolhouse with gunpowder ! " This 
last was thrown in by way of alleviating the fears of the cow- 
ardly Hank, for whom Bud had a great contempt. 

The time for school had almost come. The boys inside were 
demoralized by waiting. They began to hope that the master 
had " sloped." They dreaded to see him coming. 

" I don't believe he'll come," said Hank, with a cold shiver. 
" It's past school-time." 

" Yes, he will come, too," said Bud. " And he 'lows to come 
in here mighty quick. I don't know how. But he'll be 
a-standin' at that air desk when it's nine o'clock. I'll bet a 
s. M.— 35 



A STRUGGLE FOB THE MASTERY 555 

thousand dollars on that. Ef he don't take it into his head to 
blow us up ! " Hank was now white. 

Some of the parents came along, accidentally of course, and 
stopped to see the fun, sure that Bud would thrash the master 
if he tried to break in. Small, on the way to see a patient, per- 
haps, reined up in front of the door. Still no Ralph. It was 
just five minutes before nine. A rumor now gained currency 
that he had been seen going to Clifty the evening before, and 
that he had not come back ; in fact, Ralph had come back, and 
had slept at Squire Hawkins's. 

"' There's the master," cried Betsey Short, who stood out in the 
road, shivering and giggling alternately. For Ralph at that 
moment emerged from the sugar-camp by the schoolhouse, 
carrying a board. 

" Ho ! ho ! " laughed Hank, " he thinks he'll smoke us out. 
I guess he'll find us ready." The boys had let the fire burn 
down, and there was now nothing but hot hickory coals on the 
hearth. 

" I tell you he'll come in. He didn't go to Clifty fer nothin'," 
said Bud, who sat on one of the benches which leaned against 
the door. " I don't know how, but they's lots of ways of killing 
a cat besides chokin' her with butter. He'll come in — ef he 
don't blow us all sky-high ! " 

Ralph's voice was now heard, demanding that .the door be 
opened. 

" Let's open her," said Hank, turning livid with fear at the 
firm confident tone of the master. 

Bud straightened himself up. " Hank, you're a coward. I've 
got a mind to kick you. You got me into this blamed mess, 
and now you want to flunk. You just tech one of these ere 
fastenings, and I'll lay you out flat of your back afore you can 
say Jack Robinson." 

The teacher was climbing to the roof, with the board in his 
hand. 

" That air won't win," laughed Pete Jones, outside. He saw 
that there was no smoke. Even Bud began to hope that Ralph 



556 SDWAED EGaLESTON 

would fail, for once. The master was now on the ridge-pole of 
the schoolhouse. He took a paper from his pocket, and delib- 
erately poured the contents down the chimney. 

Mr. Pete Jones shouted " Gunpowder ! " and started down the 
road, to be out of the explosion. Dr. Small remembered, proba- 
bly, that his patient might die while he sat there, and started on. 

But Ralph emptied the paper, and laid the board over the 
chimney. What a row there was inside ! The benchefe that 
were braced against the door were thrown down, and Hank 
Banta rushed out, rubbing his eyes, coughing frantically, and 
sure that he had been blown up. All the rest followed. Bud 
bringing up the rear sulkily, but coughing and sneezing for 
dear life. Such a smell of sulphur as came from that school- 
house ! 

Betsey had to lean against the fence to giggle. 

As soon as all were out, Ralph threw the board off the chim- 
ney, leaped to the ground, entered the schoolhouse, and opened 
the windows. The school soon followed him, and all was still. 

"Would he thrash?" This was the important question in 
Hank Banta's mind. And the rest looked for a battle with Bud. 

"It is just nine o'clock," said Ralph, consulting his watch, 
"and I'm glad to see you all here promptly. I should have 
given you a holiday, if you had asked me like gentlemen, yes- 
terday. On the whole, I think I shall give you a holiday, any- 
how. The school is dismissed." 

And Hank felt foolish. 

And Bud secretly resolved to thrash Hank or the master, he 
didn't care which. 

And Mirandy looked the love she could not utter. 

And Betsey giggled. 

Some Western Schoolmasters' 

In a ragged little frontier village, where the smoky wigwams 
of the savage and thriftless Sioux still lingered among the 

' By permission of the Century Company. 



SOME WESTERN SCHOOLMASTERS 657 

unpainted board cottages of the settlers, there was a schoohnas- 
ter who pubhshed a little sheet, at the close of his school term, 
filled with the essays of his pupils. For a motto over this 
weakl}^ paper he told the printer to set : 

' ' No pent-up contineut contracts our powers, 
But the whole boundless universe is ours." 

The printer thought that the little school was staking out rather 
too large a preemption claim ; he suggested to the teacher that 

' ' No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, 
But the whole boundless continent is ours," 

was the correct version, and was sufficiently broad for the size 
of the sheet. 

" Oh, that isn't right," said the master, contemptuously. " I 
suppose some of them Utica papers had it that way." 

It seems just possible that this teacher, on the edge of civ- 
ilization, was a sort of embodiment of our modern spirit. Is 
the present system of cramming a great advance on older and 
simpler methods of teaching ? In the curriculum of our time, 
neither Utica nor the continent will serve our turn. We 
attempt the whole boundless universe, forgetful of Hosea Big- 
low's wise c6uplet : 

" For it sti'ikes me ther's sech a thing- ez sinnin' 
By overloadin' children's underpinnin'. " 

As I recall the old-time school, I cannot but think that, if its 
discipline was somewhat more brutal than the school discipline 
of to-day, its course of study was far less so. Children did not 
often die of the severity of the old masters, though many perish 
from the hard requirements of the modern system. 

To a nervous child the old discipline was, indeed, very 
terrible. The long beech switches hanging on hooks against 
the wall haunted me night and day, from the time I entered 
one of the old schools. And whenever there came an outburst 
between master and pupils, the thoughtless child often got the 



568 EDWARD EOGLESTON 

beating that should have fallen upon the malicious mischief- 
maker. As the master was always quick to fly into a' passion, 
the fun-loving boys were always happy to stir him up. It was 
an exciting sport, like bull-baiting, or like j^oking sticks through 
a fence at a cross dog. Sometimes the ferocious master showed 
an ability on his own part to get some fun out of the conflict, 
as when on one occasion in a school in Ohio, the boys were for- 
bidden to attend a circus. Five or six of them went, in spite 
of the prohibition. The next morning the schoolmaster called 
them out on the floor and addressed them : 

" So you went to the circus, did you ? " 

''Yes, sir." 

" Well, the others did not get a chance to see the circus. I 
want you boys to show them what it looked like, and how the 
horses galloped around the ring. You will join your hands in 
a circle about the stove. Now start ! " 

With that he began whipping them, as they trotted around 
and around the stove. This story is told, I believe, in a little 
volume of "Sketches," by Erwin House, now long forgotten, 
like many other good books of the Western literature of a 
generation ago. I think the author was one of the boys who 
" played horse " in the master's circus. 

It was fine sport for the more daring boys to plant a handful 
of coflee-nuts in the ashes just before the master's entrance. It 
is the nature of these coffee-nuts to lie quietly in the hot ashes 
for about half an hour, and then to explode with a sharp report, 
scattering the live coals in an inspiring way. Nothing could 
be funnier than the impotent wrath of the schoolmaster, as he 
went poking in the embers to find the remaining nuts, which 
generally eluded his search and popped away like torpedoes 
under his very nose. 

The teaching in these schools was often quite absurd. I was 
made to go through Webster's spelling-book five times before I 
was thought fit to begin to read, and my mother, twenty yesfi's 
earlier, spelled it through nine times before she was allowed to 
begin Lindley Murray's " English Reader." It was by mere 



SOME WESTERN SCHOOLMASTERS 659 

chance of the survival of some of the tougher old masters that I 
knew the old school in its glory. The change' for the better was 
already beginning thirty or forty years ago. The old masters 
taught their pupils to "do sums," the new ones had already 
begun to teach arithmetic. In one of the schools in the gen- 
eration before me was one Jim Garner ; he must be an old man 
now, if he is yet living, and he will pardon my laughing at 
the boy of fifty years ago. One day he sat for a long time 
tapping his slate with his pencil. 

" Jeems," cried the master, " what are you doing ? " 

" I'm a-tryin' to think, and I can't," said Jim, " if you take 
three from one, how many there is left." 

It was in the same old Bethel schoolhouse, about the same 
time, that the master, one Benefiel, called out the spelling class 
of which my mother, then a little girl, was usually at the head. 
The word given out was " onion." I suppose the scholars at the 
head of the class had not recognized the word by its spelling in 
studying their lessons. They all missed it widely, spelling it in 
the most ingeniously incorrect fashions. Near the foot of the 
class stood a boy who had never been able to climb up toward 
the head. But of the few words he did know how to spell, one 
was " onion." When the word was missed at the head he became 
greatly excited, twisting himself into the most ludicrous contor- 
tions as it came nearer and nearer to him. At length the one 
just above the eager boy missed, the master said " next," where- 
upon he exultingly swung his hand above his head and came 
out with : " 0-n, un, i-o-n, yun, ing-un, — I'm head, by gosh ! " 
and he marched to the head while the master hit him a blow 
across the shoulders for swearing. 

The beginning of "educational reform " in my childhood took 
on curious forms. We had one grown man in Benefiel's school 
who got his tuition free of charge in consideration of his teach- 
ing the master and some of the older pupils geography by the 
new method of singing it, which he had learned somewhere. 
At the noon recess he and the master, with others, would sit 
with Smith's Atlas open before them, singing away in the most 



560 EDWARD EG OLE ST ON 

earnest and sentimental sing-song such refrains as this, pointing 
to the state capitals while they sang : 

"Maine, Au — gusta! Maine, Au — gusta! 
New Hampshire, Concord, New Hampshire, Concord." 

and so on down to the newly annexed state of Texas. 

The " Rule of Three " was the objective point of all study, 
and he who had ciphered through that had well-nigh exhausted 
human knowledge. The illiteracy of the up-country regions 
was very great, and, during the six years which my father, 
on account of declining health, passed in a country place, 
our experience with schools was not a happy one. There 
came at one time to our district an old Irish master who also 
claimed to be a doctor. Some years before, in a lawsuit in 
which my father was retained, the old man persisted in writing 
his own deposition, wherein he related that he had studied 
" medesin " in Ireland. The old man was very much enraged 
when my father declined to send us to his school. He had 
been known to spend a solid hour in family devotions and then, 
rising from his knees, to walk across the floor and kick his son 
for going to sleep during prayers. He was afterward tried for 
poisoning his wife, but acquitted through the eloquence of that 
unsurpassed orator, Joseph G. Marshall. 

Of course, it often came to pass in such a state of things that 
men rose to prominence who had little education. A rich dis- 
tiller, who represented us in Congress some years later, wrote a 
letter, full of blunders, that fell into the hands of his opponents. 

They published it, and he suffered much ridicule. " F ," 

said one of his friends, " did you write that letter ? " " Yes," 
said he, "but it wasn't so bad as that — they mucilated it." 

In all the period of darkness and insufficient schools that pre- 
ceded my childhood, there were here and- there good teachers 
in some of the villages, and to the lucky village that had a good 
master came boys and girls from near and far — sometimes from 
fifty miles away. There was never a period of indiflerence to 
education in the Ohio River region — never a time when a good 



SOME WESTERN SCHOOLMASTERS 561 

school was not accounted a thing of the greatest value ; but the 
sparse settlement made schools scarce — the great demand for 
men of education in other walks of life always makes good 
teachers scarce in a new country — and the excess of demand 
over supply in the matter of women left no unmarried young 
women of education to serve as schoolmistresses. 

The earliest female teachers that I remember, with one ex- 
ception, were the thrifty wives of New England settlers, who 
knew how to mind their children and turn an honest dollar by 
teaching the children of their neighbors. But we were par- 
ticularly warned against New England provincialisms ; my 
father, who was a graduate of William and Mary in Virginia, 
even threatened us with corporal punishment if we should 
ever give the peculiar vowel sound heard in some parts of New 
England in such words as "roof" and " root." After our return 
to the village, I had the good fortune to have some teachers 
whom I remember with gratitude. One was a Presbyterian 
minister from New England, who, with his wife — a woman of 
fine ability — taught an excellent school. In this school we first 
saw blackboards and similar devices for teaching in an intelli- 
gent way. The minister's wife kept good books to lend to 
thoughtful pupils, and her influence on the village was a very 
beneficent one. Another was Jesse Williams, also a New Eng- 
lander, who became afterward a Methodist minister. These 
two were the only men that I knew in my boyhood who could 
teach school without beating their pupils like oxen. There 
was another New England minister whose pupil I was in one 
of the Indiana cities, who kept his school in a state of contin- 
ual terror. This is a cheap sort of discipline, quite possible 
to men who have not tact enough to govern otherwise than 
brutally. 

So great was the desire for education in Indiana, even at this 
early date, that before my memory of the place our old town of 
Vevay was adorned by a "county seminary." It was proposed 
to educate by counties, and a seminary was to be built at the 
county's expense; but the old jealousy between town and country 

s. M.— 36 



662 SDWAUD EGGLE8T0N 

flamed up. The people of the country were not going to pay- 
taxes to build a seminary in town, so the seminary was built 
outside the corporation line in a commanding position on the 
top of a steep hill, at least three hundred feet high. This high 
school always reminded me of the temple of fame which did 
duty as frontispiece to Webster's spelling book in that day, 
the temple being situated on an inaccessible mountain, at the 
foot of which an ambitious school-boy stood looking wistfully 
up. For one or two winters, the village yoiith and the country 
children boarding in town walked a mile, and then scram- 
bled up this hard hill ; but the school was soon abandoned for 
better schools in the town, and the old brick " seminary " stands 
there yet, I believe, a monument of educational folly. Many 
an ambitious modern device is like our seminary, useless from 
inaccessibility. 

While the good Presbyterian minister was teaching in our 
village, he was waked up one winter morning by a poor bound 
boy, who had ridden a farm horse many miles to get the 
" master " to show him how to " do a sum " that had puzzled 
him. The fellow was trying to educate himself, but was re- 
quired to be back at home in time to begin his day's work as 
usual. The good master, chafing his hands to keep them 
warm, sat down by the boy and expounded the " sum " to him 
so that he understood it. Then the poor boy straightened 
himself up and, thrusting his hard hand into the pocket of his 
blue jeans trowsers, pulled out a quarter of a dollar, explaining, 
with a blush, that it was all he could pay, for it was all he had. 
Of course the master made him j)ut it back, and told him to 
come whenever he wanted any help. I remember the huski- 
ness of the minister's voice when he told us about it in school 
that morning. When I recall how eagerly the people sought 
for opportunities of education, I am not surprised to hear that 
Indiana, of all the states, has to-day one of the largest, if not 
the largest, school fund. 

We had one teacher T\ho was, so far as natural genius for 
teaching goes, the best of all I have ever known, Mrs. Julia L. 



SOME WESTERN- SCROOLMA STEMS 563 

Dumont is, like all our Western writers of that day, except 
Prentice, almost entirely forgotten. But in the time, before 
railways, when the West, shut in by the Alleghanies, had an 
incipient literature, Mrs. Dumont occupied no mean place as a 
writer of poetry and prose tales. Eminent litterateurs of the 
time, from Philadelphia and Cincinnati, used to come to Vevay 
to see her ; but they themselves — these great lights of ancient 
American literature away back in the forties — are also for- 
gotten. Who remembers Gallagher and the rest to-day ? Dear 
brethren, who like myself scratch away to fill up magazine 
pages, and who, no doubt, like myself are famous enough to be 
asked for an autograph, or a " sentiment " in an album some- 
times, let us not boast ourselves. Why, indeed, should the spirit 
of mortal be proud ? We also shall be forgotten — the next gen- 
eration of school-girls will get their autographs from a set of 
upstarts who will smile at our stories and poems as out-of-date 
puerilities. Some industrious AUibone, making a cemetery of 
dead authors, may give us, in his dictionary, three lines apiece 
as a sort of head-stone. Oh, let us be humble and pray that 
even the Allibone that is to come may not forget us. For I look 
in vain in Allibone for some of the favorite names in our West- 
ern Parnassus. It was not enough that the East swallowed that 
incipient literature, it even obliterated the memory of it. Let 
us hope that the admirable Mr. Tyler, who has made to live 
again the memories of so many colonial writers, will revive also 
the memory of some of the forgotten authors of the Mississippi 
Valley. 

Among those who have been so swiftly forgotten as not even 
to have a place in Allibone, is my old and once locally famous 
teacher, Mrs. Dumont. We thought her poem on " The Retreat 
of the Ten Thousand" admirable, but we were partial judges. 
Her story of " Boonesborough " was highly praised by the 
great lights of the time. But her book of stories is out of print, 
and her poems are forgotten, and so also are the great lights 
who admired them. I do not pretend that there was enough 
in these writings to have made them deserve a different fate. 



564 EDWABD EQGLE8T0N 

Ninety-nine hundredths of all good literary production must of 
necessity be forgotten ; if the old trees endured forever, there 
would be no room for the new shoots. 

But as a schoolmistress, Mrs. Dumont deserves immortality. 
She knew nothing of systems, but she went unerringly to the 
goal by pure force of native genius. In all her early life she 
taught because she was poor ; but after her husband's increas- 
ing property relieved her from necessity, she still taught school 
from love of it. When she was past sixty years old, a school- 
room was built for her alongside her residence, which was one 
of the best in the town. It was here that I first knew her, after 
she had already taught two generations- in the place. The 
" graded " schools had been newly introduced, and no man was 
found who could, either in acquirements or ability, take pre- 
cedence of the venerable schoolmistress ; so the high school was 
given to her. 

I can see the wonderful old lady now, as she was then, with 
her cape pinned awry, rocking her splint-bottom chair nerv- 
ously while she talked. Full of all manner of knowledge, 
gifted with something very like eloquence in speech, abounding 
in affection for her pupils and enthusiasm in teaching, she 
moved us strangely. Being infatuated with her, we became 
fanatic in our pursuit of knowledge, so that the school hours 
were not enough, and we had a " lyceum " in the evening for 
reading " compositions," and a club for the study of history. 
If a recitation became very interesting, the entire school would 
sometimes be drawn into the discussion of the subject ; all other 
lessons went to the wall, books of reference were brought out of 
her library, hours were consumed, and. many a time the school 
session was prolonged until darkness forced us reluctantly to 
adjourn. 

Mrs. Dumont was the ideal of a teacher because she suc- 
ceeded in forming character. She gave her pupils unstinted 
praise, not hypocritically, but because she lovingly saw the best 
in every one. We worked in the sunshine. A dull but indus- 
trious pupil was praised for diligence, a bright pupil for ability, 



SOME WESTERN SGHOOLMASTEBS 565 

a good one for general excellence. The dullards got more 
than their share, for knowing how easily such an one is dis- 
heartened, Mrs. Dumont went out of her way to praise the first 
show of success in a slow scholar. She treated no two alike. 
, She was full of all sorts of knack and tact, a person of infinite 
resource for calling out the human spirit. She could be in- 
credibly severe when it was needful, and no overgrown boy 
whose meanness had once been analyzed by Mrs. Dumont ever 
forgot it. 

I remember one boy with whom she had taken some pains. 
One day he wrote an insulting word about one of the girls of 
the school on the door of a deserted house. Two of us were 
deputized by the other boys to defend the girl by complaining 
of him. Mrs. Dumont took her seat and began to talk to him 
before the school. The talking was all there was of it, but I 
think I never pitied any human being more than I did that 
boy as she showed him his vulgarity and his meanness, and, as 
at last in the climax of her indignation, she called him "a 
miserable hawbuck." At another time when she had picked a 
piece of paper from the floor with a bit of profanity written on 
it, she talked about it until the whole school detected the 
author by the beads of perspiration on his forehead. 

When I had written a composition on " The Human Mind " 
based on Combe's Phrenology, and adorned with quotations 
from Pope's " Essay on Man," she gave me to read the old 
Encyclopedia Britannica containing an article expounding the 
Hartleian system of mental philosophy, and followed this with 
Locke on the " Conduct of the Understanding." She was the 
only teacher I have known who understood that school studies 
were entirely secondary to general reading as a source of cul- 
ture, and who put the habit of good reading first in the list of 
acquirements. 

There was a rack for hats and cloaks so arranged as to cut 
off a portion of the school from the teacher's sight. Some of 
the larger girls who occupied this space took advantage of their 
concealed position to do a great deal of talking and tittering 



566 BBWAm) EGGLE8T0N 

which did not escape Mrs. Dumont's watchfulness. But in the 
extreme corner of the room was the seat of the excellent Dru- 

silla H , who had never violated a rule of the school. To 

reprimand the others, while excepting her, would have excited 
jealousy and complaints. The girls who sat in that part of the 
room were detained after school and treated to one of Mrs. 
Dumont's tender but caustic lectures on the dishonorableness of 
secret ill-doing. Drusilla bore silently her share of the reproof. 
But at the last the schoolmistress said : 

" Now, my dears, it may be that there is some one among 
you not guilty of misconduct. If there is I know I can trust you 
to tell me who is not to blame." 

" Drusilla never talks," they all said at once, while Drusilla, 
girl like, fell to crying. 

But the most remarkable illustration of Mrs. Dumont's skill 
in matters of discipline was shown in a case in which all the 
boys of the school were involved, and were for a short time 
thrown into antagonism to a teacher whose ascendancy over 
them had been complete. 

We were playing " town-ball " on the common at a long dis- 
tance from the schoolroom. - Town-ball is one of the old games 
from which the more scientific but not half so amusing 
" national game " of base-ball has since been evolved. In that 
day the national game was not thought of. Eastern youth 
played field-base, and Western boys town-ball in a free and 
happy way, with soft balls, primitive bats, and no nonsense. 
There were no scores, but a catch or a cross-out in town-ball 
put the whole side out, leaving the others to take the bat or 
" paddle " as it was appropriately called. The very looseness of 
the game gave opportunity for many ludicrous mischances and 
surprising turns which made it a most joyous play. 

Either because the wind was blowing adversely or because 
the play was more than commonly interesting, we failed to hear 
the ringing of Mrs. Dumont's hand-bell at one o'clock. The 
afternoon . wore on until more than an hour of school-time 
had passed, when some one suddenly bethought himself. We 



SOME WESTERN SGHOOLMASTERS 567 

dropped the game and started, pell-mell, full of consternation 
for the schoolroom. We would at that moment have preferred 
to face an angry schoolmaster with his birchen rod than to 
have offended one whom we reverenced so much. 

The girls all sat in their places ; the teacher was sitting silent 
and awful in her rocking-chair; in the hour and a half no 
lessons had been recited. We shuffled into our seats and 
awaited the storm. It was the high school, and the boys were 
mostly fifteen or sixteen years of age, but the schoolmistress had 
never a rod in the room. Such weapons are for people of 
fewer resources than she. Very quietly she talked to us, but 
with great emphasis. She gave no chance for explanation or 
apolog3^ She was hopelessly hurt and affronted. We had 
humiliated her before the whole town, she said. She should 
take away from us the morning and afternoon recess for a 
week. She would demand an explanation from us to-morrow. 

It was not possible that a company of boys could be kept for 
half an hour in such a moral sweat-box as that to which she 
treated us without growing angry. When school was dismissed 
we held a running indignation meeting as we walked toward 
home. Of course we all spoke at once. But after awhile the 
more moderate saw that the teacher had some reason. Never- 
theless, one boy was appointed to draft a written reply that 
should set forth our injured feelings. I remember in what per- 
plexity that committee found himself With every hour he 
felt more and more that the teacher was right and the boys 
wrong, and that by the next morning the reviving affection of 
the scholars for the beloved and venerated schoolmistress would 
cause them to appreciate this. So that the address which was 
presented for their signatures did not breathe much indigna- 
tion. I can almost recall every word of that somewhat pompous 
but very sincere petition. It was about as I give it here : 

" HoNOEED Madam : 

In regard to our offence of yesterday we beg that you will do us the 
justice to believe that it was not intentional. We do not ask you to 
remit the punishment you have inflicted in taking away our recess, 



568 EDWARD E0GLE8T0N 

but we do ask you to remit the heavier penalty we have incurred, your 
own displeasure." 

The boys all willingly signed this except one, who was per- 
haps the only conscious offender in that party. He confessed 
that he had observed that the sun was " getting a little slant- 
ing" while we were at play, but as his side " had the paddles" 
he did not say anything until they were jDut out. The unwill- 
ing boy wanted more indignation in the address, and he 
wanted the recess back. But when all the others had signed he 
did not dare leave his name off, but put it at the bottom of the 
list. 

With trembling hands we gave the paper to the schoolmis- 
tress. How some teachers would have used such a paper as a 
means of further humiliation to the offenders ! How few could 
have used it as she did ! The morning wore on without recess. 
The lessons were heard as usual. As the noon hour drew near, 
Mrs. Dumont rose from her chair and went into the library. We 
all felt that something was going to happen. She came out with 
a copy of Shakspere, which she opened at the fourth scene of 
the fourth act of the second part of " King Henry IV." Giving 
the book to my next neighbor and myself she bade us read the 
scene, alternating with the change of speaker. You remember 
the famous dialogue in that scene between the dying king and 
the prince who has prematurely taken the crown from the bed- 
side of the sleeping king. It was all wonderfully fresh to us 
and to our schoolmates, whose interest was divided between the 
scene and a curiosity as to the use the teacher meant to make 
of it. At length the reader who took the king's part read : 

' ' O my son ! 
Heaven put it in thy mind to take it hence, 
That thou mightst win the more thy father's love, 
Pleading so wisely in excuse of it. " 

Then she took the book and closed it. The application was 
evident to all, but she made us a touching little speech full of 
affection, and afterward restored the recess. She detained the 



SOME WESTERN SCHOOLMASTERS 569 

girls when we had gone to read to them the address, that she 
might " show them what noble brothers they had." Without 
doubt she made overmuch of our nobleness. But no one knew 
better than Mrs. Dumont that the surest way of evoking the 
best in man or boy, is to make the most of the earliest symp- 
toms of it. From that hour our schoolmistress had our whole 
hearts ; we loved her and reverenced her ; we were thoughtless 
enough, but for the most of us, her half-suspected wish was a 
supreme law. 

So, after all, it does not matter that the world no longer 
reads her stories or remembers her poems. Her life always 
seemed to me a poem, or something better than a poem. It 
does not matter, fellowrscribblers, that the generation to come 
shall forget us and go to upstart fellows of another generation 
for autograph verses for church fairs and charity bazaars. It 
does not matter greatly, dear, aspiring young reader, whether 
you ever succeed in getting your poetry embalmed in " Scribner " 
or not. I cannot read an old magazine of forty years ago with- 
out a laugh — and almost a tear — over the airs those notabilities 
of a day gave themselves. How sure they were of immortality, 
and how utterly forgotten are the most of them, like last year's 
burdock, that boasted itself so proudly in the fence-row ! . But 
whether you print your story or poem or not, blessed are you 
if you put heroism into your life, so that the memory of it shall 
refresh some weary wayfarer long after the fickle public has 
forgotten your work. 



D'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

18 29 

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was born in County Cumberland, 
in North England, in 1829. He received his early education at a 
famous school in London, known as the Hospital. His college days 
were passed at the University of Cambridge. For twelve years or more 
he was classical master in the Edinburgh Academy. In 1864 he was 
appointed professor of G-reek in Queen's College, in G-alway, Ireland, 
which position he still holds. 

While at Edinburgh, Professor Thompson wrote the "Day-dreams 
of a Schoolmaster, " which was well received, and early attracted at- 
tention in America, for its expression of radical views on the teaching 
of ancient languages. In 1867 he was invited to deliver a series of 
lectures on education at the Lowell Institute, in Boston. He complied, 
and the lectures were subsequently published under the title, "Way- 
side Thoughts." Among other works by Professor Thompson are 
"Ancient Leaves," "Sales Attici; or, the Wit and Wisdom of the 
Athenian Drama," and "Scalae Novee; or, A Ladder to Latin." 

Characterization 

Professor D'Arcy Thompson has several first-rate qualifications for 
the work which he has undertaken. He knows the nature of boys, 
and is in full sympathy with them. He also knows Latin thoroughly, 
thinks in it, and writes it with great elegance. He has also thought 
with original power on the philosophy of language, is always in search 
of explanations, and is eager to bring everything out of the realms of 
unreason. All these qualities make themselves visible in the book 
before us. At the same time, great moderation is shown in hazarding 
explanations or dismissing irrational rules. 

"English Journal of Education." 
570 



DAY-DBEAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 571 

Day-Dreams of a Schoolmaster 

(Abbreviated) 

I. 

The Under Form at St. Edward's, and the Theory of 
Elementary Unintelligibility 
• 
This day — October 10th, 1863 — my Junior Class, in the 

Schola Nova ^ of Dunedin,^ had its first lesson in Greek ; put 
aside its frock and linen pants, and donned its breeches, intel- 
lectually. No transition state is agreeable to the subject, or 
graceful in the eyes of a looker-on. These little fellows will 
all waddle, duck-like, for a considerable period in their new 
clothes : some will never habituate themselves thereto ; but will 
by and by discard them and return to the frock and linen 
pants ; affording, it may be, a passing laugh to the unphilo- 
sophic bystander, but themselves deriving permanent comfort 
and unrestricted swing of limb. 

The step these innocents take to-day is, of course, a step into 
the dark. Will the darkness, into which they so confidingly 
j)lunge, be to them perpetual and Cimmerian ? or will it duly 
break into a clear, bright dawn ? Within three years the ma- 
jority of them will have probably passed from within these 
walls. What an opportunity is meanwhile afforded of wreaking 
upon their little heads summary vengeance for the wrongs done 
me by a past generation ! — of doing to them as I was done by ! 
Not only should I thus be giving vent to my indignation for 
past ill-usage ; but, strange to say, I should actually be carry- 
ing out the wishes of the i5arents of my victims ; for, in general, 
those parents dread new-fangled ways, and cling piously to old 
scholastic superstitions. Well, for three years, then, let me 
lead this little flock, blind-folded, by curiously sinuous and zig- 
zag ways ; so that, always in motion, they may never progress ; 

1 new school " a poetic name for Edinburgh 



572 D'AEGY WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

and at the close of the triennium, remove the bandage from 
their eyes, and show them, to their wonderment, that they are 
standing by the starting-post; that they have been dancing 
their Greek hornpipe on a plate. 

This first lesson has turned back the dial-hand of my days, 
and for a passing hour I am standing in the dawn of my own 
most dreary, weary boyhood. 

I was not quite seven and a half years old when my dear 
mother was presented with a free admission for myself, her 
eldest son, to the Grammar School of St. Edward. The offer 
was too valuable an one to admit of refusal. I was accordingly 
prepared for admission to my new home, by having my hair 
somewhat closely shorn, and by being clothed in a long, blue 
gown, not of itself ungraceful, but opening in front so as to dis- 
close the ridiculous spectacle of knee-breeched, yellow-stock- 
inged legs. After some laughter at my disguise, and much 
weeping at my banishment, I bade good-bye to my dear 
mother. We little thought at the time that school was to be 
my home for twelve long years. 

The day after my entry into this colossal institution, a Latin 
grammar was placed into my hands. It was a bulky book of 
its kind : considering the diminutiveness of the new student, a 
portentously bulky book. It was bulky in consequence of its 
comprehensiveness. It gave all imaginable rules, and all 
imaginable exceptions. It had providentially stored within it 
the requisite gear for whatever casualty might befall us. The 
syntax rules, in the edition presented to me, were, for the first 
time, rendered mercifully in English: those for gender and 
quantity remained in the old Latin ; and the Latin was com- 
municated in a hideously discordant rhythm. Over a space of 
years we went systematically through and through that book ; 
page after page, chapter after chapter. It was all unintelligible ; 
all obscure ; but some spots were wrapt in more than ordinary 
gloom. Our chronic bewilderment was varied from time to 
time by shooting pains, brought on by some passage or expres- 
sion unusually indigestible. We read of creatures, happily few 



DAT-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 573 

in number, that went about in the Epicsene Gender. Were 
they fish, flesh or fowl? Would the breed be ever extinct? 
Under certain desperate circumstances a participle and a noun 
together were bound hand and foot, and put into the Ablative 
Absolute. What had they done to be treated in a manner thus 
peremptory, unreasonable, crotchety? Did they ever get out 
after being once put in ? Then there were gerunds in Di, Do, 
and Bum. How they recalled to us the old Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, 
and the smell of English blood ! And supines in Urn and V. 
What was the meaning of these cabalistic names ? I did not 
know then ; and I do not know now. And yet I have been 
behind the scholastic curtain for twelve long years. 

There was no entire chapter in the book more broken with 
pitfalls than that, composed in doggerel, which treated of the 
rules for gender. Not one word, I am sure, of an exception- 
able kind had escaped the diabolic ken of the compiler. String 
upon string of jangling, unmusical lines could we repeat with 
a singular rapidity ; understanding nothing ; asking no ques- 
tions. Oh, the sweet, simple faith of childhood ! We had been 
told to commit those lines to memory, and we committed them. 
They would, doubtless, do us good in the latter days. We 
should, at all events, be flogged there and then, unless we sang 
them like caged birds. It was the will of Allah: Allah was 
good. 

Many of the words in that puzzling liturgy I have never 
fallen in with since, though I have been a student of its dialect 
for twenty-seven years. Some of the words I have since dis- 
covered to be grossly indecent in their naked English meaning. 
Well, well : they might have all been so, without doing more 
harm to our morality, than they did good to our understand- 
ings. I can vividly recollect one circumstance, that broke in a 
startling manner to me the dull monotony of these years. It 
was a hot and sultry afternoon. My wits were wandering, I 
suppose in green fields. So, in class-time when my turn came 
round, my brain was a tabula rasa : ^ the inscription was clean 

I a blank tablet 



574 D'ARCT WENTWORTE THOMPSON 

wiped out, that had been carefully written there but half an 
hour before. The master, a clergyman, had broken his cane 
upon a previous delinquent ; his riding- whip was sent for, and 
I received ten lashes on my two hands. I was then under nine 
years of age. For a passing bewilderment I was treated as 
though I had broken into an orchard. Our master was shortly 
after, if I mistake not, presented to a vicarage : he was in ap- 
pearance almost effeminately genteel; in dress, scrupulously 
neat ; with fingers tapering and delicate as a lady's. 

The round-shot of a Latin grammar had been, I believe, 
tied to our legs, to prevent our intellectually straying. How- 
ever, in course of time we became habituated to the incum- 
brance, and ceased to feel it as a serious check upon our 
movements. The hour at length arrived in which it was 
considered wise to attach another round-shot to our other legs. 
This was done accordingly in the shape of a Greek grammar, 
written entirely in Latin. This extra weight answered the pur- 
pose effectually : we were all brought to an immediate stand- 
still. 

I have sometimes thought, in a charitable mood, that the 
compiler of this book — Heaven forgive him ! to word it mildly 
— composed it originally for such students as might be famil- 
iar with the tongue in which it was written. My comrades and 
I were not in that condition. We had to grapple with the 
difficulties of one unknown tongue through the medium of 
another tongue almost equally unknown. We were, in fact, 
required to give a determinate solution to an indeterminable 
problem. We had set us the equation : 

• « + 2/ = 0; 

and were called upon to give the values of x and y in terms of 
constants to be manufactured by ourselves. It was the old, 
old story. Bricks without straw. " Ye are idle," said the 
taskmasters. So they took away our scanty wisps ; but dimin- 
ished naught of the tale of bricks as heretofore. 

I have heard the system casuistically defended by men who, 



DAT-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 576 

old prejudices apart, were intelligent and sagacious. "The 
abstract rules of grammar," said they, " are at first above the 
comprehension of all children. Even if they be worded in the 
mother-tongue, it will be long before their true and full signifi- 
cance is apprehended. If, then, these rules be communicated 
in a strange language, the very difficulty surmounted in com- 
mitting them to memory will imprint them the more lastingly 
on their understandings." 

Now it would occur to me — but my simplicity may be to 
blame — that if subjects, concrete or abstract, be beyond a boy's 
comprehension, the less he has to do with them the better. 
We never ask an errand-boy to carry a weight we know he can- 
not lift. Might not the communication of such subjects be 
deferred to a period when, by a process of training, a boy's 
intellect were rendered capable of grasping them ? Or, again, 
at the expense of a little time and trouble, might not the major- 
ity of grammatical rules be so simply worded and so familiarly 
illustrated, as to be brought home to the intelligence of boys of 
ordinary capacity? I grant the difficulty, if we persist in 
using unintelligible terms, as Gerunds, Supines, Aorists, and the 
like ; and rules that would be awkwardly enough worded, even 
if they were correct in substance. 

But for the sake of argument, let us admit the defense put 
forward for the old system of Elementary Unintelligibility. 
Then, surely, we may push it to its logical issues. All will 
allow morality to be higher than grammar. It is, consequently, 
a more important task to imprint upon the minds of our 
children the rules of the former than the rules of the latter. 
But what will serve to imprint indelibly the rules of one science, 
will serve also to imprint the rules of another ; supposing that, 
for the time, it be unnecessary that either set of rules be under- 
stood. Then why not communicate the Ten Commandments 
through the medium of Chinese? Or, if that method be found 
insufficiently irksome and tedious, why not improve upon the 
method, by rendering it physically painful? Might we not 
inculcate each portion of the Decalogue with the aid of a pin, 



576 D'ABGY WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

and imprint it upon the memory of childhood by associating it 
with pricks upon some sensitive portion of the frame ? In this 
simple manner, we might literally fasten a whole system of 
ethics and grammar upon the bodies as well as the brains of 
our little ones. The system might be extended to our univer- 
sity course ; and a petty domestic instrument might prove a 
weapon of power in the hands of an energetic professor of 
chemistry, logic, or metaphysics ! Our academic youth would 
go out into the world, tattooed with the records of their educa- 
tion. A man's own skin — and sometimes even that would be 
of the old material — would be his portable diploma. 

But to return to our Greek grammar written in Latin. Day 
after day our clerical Sphinx propounded the mysterious 
enigma. When is a door not a door f was the simple conun- 
drum that confounded us. It was set us in the language of the 
Cumsean Sibyl, and the solution was to be given in that of the 
Pythian Apollo. Day after day a victim fell ; 

aiEl de Ttvgal vekvgov uaiovro ^ansiai.' 

When I escaped from Thebes, no CEdipus had appeared. I 
wonder if the Sphinx is at the old work still. 

For five years — and five years make a hole in one's school- 
time, not to say in one's life — for five dreary years the process 
went on. We committed daily to memory some page or half- 
page of the sacred but unintelligible book. We revised it, and 
we re-revised it again and again. To lisp its contents seemed 
as natural as respiration. We could repeat glibly most per- 
plexing declensions and conjugations ; contracts of all kinds ; 
changes Attic, Ionic, and ^olic; verbs in go and verbs in /<z; 
rules of syntax, prosody, and construction, which no one seemed 
called upon to understand at the time, and to which, in their 
Latin form, no one was, to my knowledge, ever referred after- 
wards. 

So far did Greek accommodate itself to ordinary views, that 
we occasionally caught glimpses of such familiar friends as 
1 And ever the crowded pyres of the dead kept burning. (From the " Iliad.") 



DAT-BREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 577 

nouns, and verbs, and prepositions, and the like. But here the 
condescension ceased. Ever and anon came looming through 
the Latin fog strange forms, gigantic, spectral; Heteroclites, 
Paradigms, Asynartetuses, Syzygies ; Augments, temporal and 
syllabic. The former seemed to embody some dim records of 
a pre-Adamite state; mystic allusions to bygone Mammoths, 
Behemoths, Ichthyosauri ; under the latter twain seemed to lurk 
an allegory of the connection between Church and State. 

It is a grand thing to be conversant with a noble language, 
unknown to all around us, to our nearest kin. It conveys an 
undefined idea of wealth and power. We travel where they 
cannot travel. We visit at great houses, and leave them stand- 
ing at the door. We stand in sunlight on the hill-top, while 
they are groping in the valley. We wield with ease a mighty 
flail of thought, which they cannot uplift with both hands. 
Yes, we may reasonably be proud of the capability of speak- 
ing, maybe of thinking in a foreign tongue. But it is either 
superlatively sublime, or superlatively ridiculous, to speak for 
years a language unintelligible to one's self. 

But before quitting forever the old Under Form, let me say 
that my quarrel has been with a system and not with persons. 
The only unfeeling man under whom I had been placed was 
the genteel clergyman of the riding-whip. My other masters 
were good and kindly men, who went according to order through 
a dull routine, believing in it most probably, and quite power- 
less from their position, if not also from their abilities, to modify 
it to any material extent. One of them, before passing further, 
I must specially recall. He was the only classical usher ; the 
only classical authority not in orders ; a tall, gigantically tall 
and muscular Scotchman, of the name of Ramsay. He was 
also the only classical teacher without a cane. He used a strap ; 
Scotice, ' the taiuse. Was it because he was only an usher and a 
layman ? — or was it a kindly record of his own more merciful 
training in his dear native land ? Good soul : even in the 
using of this innocuous instrument he kept his elbow on the 

* in Scotch 
s. M.— 37 



578 D'ARGY WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

desk, to spare us the full sweep of his tremendous arm. There 
was a silly legend current among us, founded only on his phys- 
ical strength, that the cane had been denied him, after his hav- 
ing once cut unintentionally through a boy's hand — an idle 
myth, that wrapped a possibility in specious falsehood. To see 
the huge torso towering above the comparatively puny desk, it 
was like the figure-head of a man-of-war. Why, with a cane 
the man could have hewn a beadle to the chine, and with a 
birch have minced us mannikins to collops. I wonder if he 
had an ancestor at Bannockburn : such an one, I could imag- 
ine, with a great two-handed sword, would have chopped off 
English heads like turnips. I have an indistinct idea of there 
having been something very soft and tender in the domestic 
relations of that biggest and best of ushers. 

But, farewell ! good, kindly usher ! and farewell ! good gen- 
tleuLen of the Under Form ! — ye deserved a better fate than the 
fate of Sisyphus bolides. 



III. 



The Hellenists 

I have been dubbed Hellenist. Nay, never start, reader: I 
am too proud to be conceited. There : you need not stand un- 
covered. I am invested with the Latin Order of the Garter, 
and the Greek Order of the Golden Fleece. I am standing on 
a peak in Darien, and staring at a -new Pacific, broad and blue, 
wherein lie happy islands. I have reached the zenith of all 
boyish hopes ; surely, henceforth my path will slope downwards 
to the grave. I am self-poised, self-centered. All pettiness of 
vanity is swallowed up in an absorbing contentment and pride. 
For three years I shall pace the old, shadowy cloisters ; then 
for as many years shall I walk the garden of Academus ; and 
then pass into the great world by one of two roads ; and at the 
end of one road I can dimly see men with gray wigs and silk 
gowns ; and at the end of the other, a circle of reverend elders 



DAT-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 579 

with white lawn sleeves. Phaeton, Phaeton, your head is 
turning giddy ! 

To descend, then, from my dizzy flight. I am in the middle 
of my seventeenth year. I have had nine years of classical drill- 
ing. All that I have as yet learnt might very easily, indeed, 
have been acquired, had I commenced in my thirteenth instead 
of in my eighth year, and had the system of instruction been 
natural and easy instead of being unnatural and difficult. This 
I state unhesitatingly, after having twice carried a class through 
the whole of a school curriculum of seven years. 

Had it been my lot now to leave school, I should have carried 
away a rather pleasant remembrance of my first usher, and an 
affectionate remembrance of but one master, Delille. It was 
only in the Hellenist class that I came to love and venerate 
Rice, to love and admire Webster. Speaking from the light of 
subsequent experience, I believe no school in the world ever 
had, or ever will have, a trio of masters to surpass the trio I 
here mention. Let me pause for a moment, to portray them in 
few but loving words. 

Delille, our master of French, was a tall and powerfully built 
man, with a fresh and ruddy complexion, and a manly carriage. 
His temper was imperturbably good, his sense of humor in- 
fectious. He had no vulgar instrument of punishment; but 
by his noble presence and the unseen force of his character, he 
could maintain the strictest order in classes numbering above 
a hundred pupils. He spoke our language without a flaw of 
accent ; it was only by an occasional hyper-correctness of hither 
for here that one could detect the foreigner. His classes were 
held out of the usual school-hours, sometimes even on half-holi- 
days ; and for all that, they were the pleasantest classes in the 
under school. His severest mode of punishment was to set a 
fable of La Fontaine to be committed to memory. You were 
not released until it had been repeated without one single 
break ; and you generally left him, exasperated a little at the 
loss of play, but laughing perforce at some grave piece of badi- 
nage with which he had dismissed you. 



580 D'ABOY WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

I knew him afterwards as a friend, and guest, and host. And 
what a companion he was at table or over a cigar ! He was, 
like his compatriots, hon vivant;^ and as good a judge of wine 
as any member of a London club. He had a splendid voice for 
declamation or singing ; was an admirable after-dinner speaker 
in either French or English ; could sing a song of Lover's with 
a rich Irish brogue ; a song of Burns' with all the subtlety of 
its pure, sweet accent ; and roll out a sea-song of Dibdin's like a 
sailor ! Had I never esteemed him as a master, I should have 
liked him as an accomplished man of the world and a delight- 
ful companion. With a number of university friends, I once 
dined with him at his house in Ely Place. I still remember 
the four kinds of champagne that were broached at dinner; the 
Chambertin that flowed freely afterwards with the flow of Vv'it 
and good-humor; the music in the drawing-room, and the sing- 
ing from ballad, opera, and oratorio ; the hour at midnight in 
the snug library ; a fuming bowl and irreproachable cigars ; 
and I remember, as my cab drove me to the Tavistock, that the 
lamps of Holborn showed through the window like mad and 
merry dancing stars. Alas ! I am writing of one whose hand 
I shall never grasp again, for cordial welcome or regretful 
farewell. 

Of Webster I cannot speak at such length ; and happily, for 
the best of reasons : he is not, like his two colleagues, a memory 
alone. But I shall never forget how contagious was his zeal 
for work ; how impetuously chivalrous was his character ; how 
thorough his respect for industry; how unmistakable his abhor- 
rence of shuffling and sloth. And I remember thinking, at 
times, when I looked up from a remarkably white hand on the 
desk to a handsome and j^roud and almost haughty face before 
me, that my clerical master should have been a courtly abbe, 
and have " set in hall with prince and gentle ladye." 

And Burney — dear old Burney, as we used to call our head- 
master — how feeble would be any words to describe our fond- 
ness for that dear, white head ! The doctor was a noble type 

' one wlio lives well 



DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 581 

of the old-fashioned English headmaster. He had a loathing 
for all scientific study ; was utterly ignorant of modern lan- 
guages : indeed, I believe, he looked upon Delille as the only 
Frenchman that had ever been reclaimed from greasy cookery 
and sour claret to a repentant but honest appreciation of roast 
beef and port wine. English literature of the day to him was 
non-existent ; his lectures smacked of the last century, with 
their long undulating periods, and pauses Ciceronian. He was 
the fellow-student rather than the master of his Hellenists. 
Patiently would he pore over their exercises, in the lightest 
study that sent a melancholy gleam into the long, dark school- 
room. All information, historical, antiquarian, geographical, 
or philosophic, as connected with the classics, he regarded with 
contempt : any dunderhead, he considered, might cram that at 
his leisure ; but it pained him to the quick if a senior pupil 
violated the Porsonian pause, or trifled with a subjunctive. 
" A word in your ear, doctor," said an Oxford examiner once 
to him ; " your captain yesterday could not tell me where Elis 
was ! " " I looked horrified," said the doctor, in repeating the 
circumstance ; " I looked horrified, of course ; but, on my word, 
I did not know it myself. But," continued he, " these Oxford 
fellows like this kind of thing ; but I'll wager you'd get few of 
them to write a good Porson." 

Like all simple and unworldly natures, he was generous to 
a fault. He would have given anything, forgiven anything to 
a good Greek scholar. The boys of the under school feared 
him as a strict and resolute and severe disciplinarian. We, his 
Hellenists, knew that, while he followed, unquestioningly, old 
Draconian laws, his heart was of the kindest and softest and 
tenderest. How the old man, that could look so stern at times, 
would weep, when an old pupil went wrong at college ; with what 
unreproaching kindness he would help him out of difficulties, 
into which idleness or extravagance or misfortune might have 
plunged him. How like a father he would welcome him, when 
all errors had been retrieved by the winning of an honorable 
place in the list of final honors. " You must remember, sir, 



582 D'ARCY WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

that my place is due to you ; that but for your help last sum- 
mer, I could not have returned for long-vacation reading." 
" Nonsense," replied the doctor ; " I remember nothing of the 
kind; but I'll remember long enough the place you held in the 
classical Tripos." 

And he, to whom he thus spoke, and I, who am now writing, 
and all who had the honor of belonging to the class of his Hel- 
lenists, w411 remember him with love and gratitude and rever- 
ence to the end ; ay, to the end. 

And now, reader, why should I give a description of the 
Hellenist class ? With three such masters, and a set of com- 
rades most of whom were enthusiastic students, and all of whom 
were pleasant fellows, how could a triennium fail to be an in- 
dustrious and a happy one? — It was the reign of Antoninus 
Pius in my school-life, and needs no chronicling. 



X. 

Place aux Dames' 



The only grammar taught to girls below the age of twelve 
should be that of their own language ; and its terms should be 
made as plain and intelligible as possible. Perhaps no subject 
is better taught than this latter one in our schools. But to girls 
of superior intelligence, even English is not the language upon 
which to found general and comprehensive ideas of grammar, 
such as may facilitate the after-acquisition of any modern lan- 
guage. You may never inculcate ideas of filial duty on a child, 
by continually obtruding upon him impertinent mention of 
his own parents. You would tell him amusing and instruct- 
ive stories of other children and other parents. Even so with 
grammar. 

In the education of boys, it has been agreed, perhaps truly, 

^ Room for the Ladies 



DAT-BREAM8 OF A SCHOOLMASTER 683 

that Latin is the best instrument for inculcating the general 
laws of language. Are there genders in educational systems, 
like as in Latin or French nouns ? Is there anything in Latin 
grammar peculiarly male f How did they talk at dinner-time 
in ancient Rome ? Did the men speak only masculine nouns ; 
the ladies, feminine ones ; and the servants, common ones ? We 
have no warrant for such a conclusion. I believe the Latin lan- 
guage to have been, and still to be, incapable of such partition- 
ing. It is not of the masculine gender ; nor of the feminine ; 
nor of the neuter or neither ; but, like other languages, of the 
either gender. And, if properly taught, it would be found a far 
easier language than German ; considerably easier than French ; 
and a little easier in its old form than in its slightly altered 
form of modern Italian, which is very easy indeed. 

Heaven forbid that our girls should be taught Latin with the 
grammars now in use, and those annotated books that may 
help an incompetent master over an occasional stile, but 
can only enervate a pupil's brain, and transfer coin from the 
pocket of an exasperated parent to the pocket of an undeserv- 
ing publisher. 

Girls might, with great advantage, pass through two or even 
three years of Latin teaching, if that language were taught on 
an easy, simple, and natural method. 

Although a schoolmaster of boys, reader, I have still a touch 
of gallantry. Smile at my proposal. I would undertake to 
teach Latin to a class of girls twelve years of age, without the 
use of pedantic and expensive books, or of pedantic and mean- 
ingless grammar rules. 

My pronunciation would be Italian, as nearly Tuscan as I 
could make it. I would never forget that I was training 
children, not to be schoolmistresses, but gentle ladies in a 
drawing-room, and gentler mothers in a nursery. I would so 
teach a young class, that if a master of a great English school 
were to interrupt us in our work, he would say : " Ah ! they 
are engaged in a lesson of trumpery Italian." And I would, 



584 D'ABGT WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

perhaps, mildly quiz him to my pupils in correct Latinity, 
which, from being rapidly and musically spoken, he would 
not understand. And in two years, perhaps; and in three 
years, most certainly; I would have girls in my class, who 
would speak an old language, not unlike the language of 
modern Tuscany, in a way that would shame their brothers 
and cousins, who had been five years at any grammar school 
in the kingdom, and trained on the old system of Elementary 
Unintelligibility. And I would teach them Latin in such a 
way that very soon they would read a parable in either Italian 
or Spanish without stumbling over either word of construction. 
And I would engage to say that my j^upils would like their 
work, and would not dislike their master. 

And consider the collateral effects of so bracing and health- 
ful an education of our girls. Boy-classics would be forced, in 
emulation, to dispense with much of their dull pedantry and 
youths would be ashamed to continue ignorant of modern 
tongues that their sisters spoke with elegance and ease. We 
have now a smattering of youth that cram reluctantly some 
knowledge of French, German, Italian, or Spanish, to win 
marks in our Chinese examinations. What a vulgar and 
profane usage of the dialects of Corneille, Goethe, Dante, and 
Cervantes ! 

But, reader, you are alarmed. You are afraid that such a 
system would make blue-stockings of our girls. Prejudice, 
reader — unmanly, unchivalrous prejudice. The ladies of the 
Russian noblesse can speak almost every language of Europe ; 
but they are exquisitely feminine. My brother sat for a week 
opposite a fair creature at a table dlidte ^ in Venice ; and perhaps 
he never eat less, or enjoyed dinner more, for a week together. 
He heard her speak all the languages he knew; and some that 
he did not know. But for her linguistic powers he would have 
taken her for an English girl, from her English accent and her 
blonde beauty. Of course, she was a Russian. She had no 
appearance of the blue. If she was one — then I could wish 

^ a common table for guests at a hotel 



DAT-DREAM8 OF A SCHOOLMASTER 685 

that all were even as that sweet, young, blue-eyed polyglot. 
'Twas a lucky fellow, I should think, that caught that little 
Tartar. 

Do, reader, disabuse your reasonable mind of unreasonable 
crotchets. Women have just as keen intelligence as men ; less 
j^owers, maybe, of abstract reasoning ; but far finer jDercejDtive 
and linguistic faculties. They need not be trained to exhaus- 
tive scholarship ; but refinement of mental culture suits them, 
perhajDS, even more than it does our own sex. 

I imagine that the Lady Jane, who read her Phsedo when 
the horn was calling, had as pretty a mouse-face as you ever 
saw in a dream ; and I am sure that gentle girl was a better 
scholar than any lad of seventeen is now in any school of Eng- 
land or Scotland. 

And once upon a tirfie, reader — a long, long while ago — I 
knew a schoolmaster, and that schoolmaster had a wife. And 
she was young, and fair, and learned ; like that princess-pupil 
ofoldAscham; fair and learned as Sydney's sister, Pembroke's 
mother. And her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, reader — 
an excellent thing in woman. And her fingers were quick at 
needlework, and nimble in all a housewife's cunning. And she 
could draw sweet music from the ivory board; and sweeter, 
stranger music from the dull life of her schoolmaster-husband. 
And she was slow at heart to understand mischief, but her feet 
ran swift to do good. And she was simple with the simplicity 
of girlhood, and wise with the wisdom that cometh only of the 
Lord, — cometh only to the children of the Kingdom. And her 
sweet young life was as a Morning Hymn, sung by child-voices 
to rich organ-music. Time shall throw nis dart at Death, ere 
Death has slain such another. 

For she died, reader : a long, long while ago. And I stood 
once by her grave ; her green grave, not far from dear Dunedin. 
Died, reader, for all she was so fair, and young, and learned, 
and simple, and good. And I am told it made a great differ- 
ence to that schoolmaster. 



586 D'ABGT WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

XXI. 

SUUM CUIQUE* 

Nascitur, non fit^ may be said as truly of the schoolmaster as 
of the poet. The popular but mistaken idea is, that any young 
man, who at the age of twenty-one is well enough educated for 
a learned profession, but lacks the means or spirit to push his 
way in the world of law or medicine, may subside into a teacher 
of the classics. Many young Englishmen think so themselves, 
and take clerical orders at the time of entering the despised 
profession, that they may escape from it, if on any white day a 
vicarage should fall from the clouds. These are they that are 
not born schoolmasters, but are made schoolmasters of men. 

In the matter of education, Scotland is, in many points, in 
advance of her southern neighbor. The middle-class prepara- 
tory schools of Dunedin are unapproachably superior to any- 
thing of the kind — if there be anything of the kind — in England. 
The teaching of the elementary classes in our high school and 
Schola Nova is even at present far superior to that of similar 
classes in any public schools in England with which I have 
been directly or indirectly acquainted; and that includes 
almost all the public schools of importance in the country. 
"With a few, but I must own, very important modifications, our 
training of junior classes might be made almost perfect of its 
kind. 

In our high school is still retained much of the beautiful 
vowel-music of Italian-Latin. The Greek professor of our 
Dunedin University — faithful among the faithless, in this re- 
spect — can read a simile of Homer, without marring rhythm 
or ignoring accent. 

In Scotland, also, the profession of teaching, though not suffi- 
ciently honored from a social point of view, is rightly considered 
as specific, and calling for specific qualifications. When Adam and 
1 His own ' He is born, he is not made 



DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 587 

Carson of our high school, Melvin of Aberdeen, and Carmichael 
of our own Schola Nova, first apprenticed themselves to their 
craft, they left no plank behind them for recrossing at a favor- 
able opportunity to ease or affluence in an extraneous calling. 
They put their hands to the plough, these simple men ; and 
there was no looking back. They devoted themselves to the 
business of classical instruction as single-heartedly as did the 
Apostles to the dissemination of Christian doctrine. They knew 
well enough that spiritual darkness abounded, but they left its 
enlightenment to another calling — the only one that in the 
dignity of usefulness takes precedence of their own. 

And one of them lived too short a life ; but ' they all lived 
lives laborious and useful and honorable. From dawn to sun- 
set of their day of toil they sowed the seed, or drave the plow, 
or brake with harrows the obstructive glebe. And when at 
length it was growing dark, these husbandmen dismissed their 
little reapers and gleaners ; and gat them home, wearied ; and 
turned to ; and fell on sleep. No foretaste of earthly glory 
sweetened the bitterness of the last cup. From modest homes 
they were borne, unnoticed, to modest graves. But the statues 
of these Cincinnatus-teachers stand, not unwreathed with laurel, 
in the Valhalla of great and good and single-hearted school- 
masters, with all the other good men and true. And the 
Valhalla is not in Dunedin, reader ; but in a great and distant 
city; a city not built with hands; a city more beautiful by far 
than beautiful Dunedin. 

About a furlong from my own lodgings, in a room as near to 
heaven,^ burns the midnight lamp of one who could read a 
play of Sophocles ere I could inarticulately scream. He has 
read more of ancient literature than many literary men have 
read of English. He has purified his Greek seven times in the 
fire. He has resuscitated many Aorists, that for centuries had 
lain dormant under mossy stones. He has passed, alone and 
fearless, through waste places, where no footfall had echoed 
for a hundred years. In England, nothing but a special inter- 
1 an allusion to the very tall buildings of Edinburgh 



588 D'ABCT WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

position of Providence could have saved this scholar from the 
Bench of Bishops : in Scotland, nothing short of personal vio- 
lence could have pushed him into a Professorial Chair. The 
fact is, this man, with all his learning, is bowed down with the 
weight of a most unnational modesty. Indeed, of this quality, 
as of erudition, there is as much contained in his well as would 
serve to irrigate his native country. Heaven knows what he 
might have been had he consented in earlier life to play in 
public the cymbals of claptrap and the tom-tom of self-conceit. 
But his voice was never heard in the Palaverium of Dunedin. 
My friend, in fact, was ostracized by his fellow-citizens of the 
modern Athens. You may hear of him at Jena, Gottingen, or 
Heidelberg ; but, in perusing the list of doctors of our own 
universities, after running your finger down some columns of 
mediocre Rabbis, you will experience a sensation of relief in 
missing the name of Veitch. 

In day-schools, like the two great institutions of Dunedin, 
where the boys only give a morning and noon attendance for 
five days in the week, there is no call for the clerical element 
whatsoever. Their pupils combine the advantages of a public 
school with the inestimable and civilizing influences of home 
life. As their parents and guardians may reasonably be sup- 
posed to be in all cases Christian, there would seem to be 
no need for religious instruction in their school-hours ; and it 
might be thought sufficient, if such institutions opened the 
work of each day with the reverent reading of some chapter 
of the New Testament, and a short and appropriate prayer; 
and if a weekly lesson were given from the historical portions 
of the older Scriptures. Not to speak of the heterogeneous 
admixture of doctrinal lessons with those in Latin syntax and 
Rule of Three, the boys are supposed to hear family prayers 
each morning and evening ; to attend Divine Service regularly ; 
and to hear the Bible read and expounded by a devout father 
or mother. The hearing of one parable from the gentle voice 
of the latter is worth all the religious instruction that a master 



DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 589 

can impart in class, where in the hearts of boys the spirit of 
gentleness is too apt to succumb to the sterner spirit of class 
ambition. 

However, the question is different in regard to large schools 
where children are, with questionable propriety, removed en- 
tirely from home. Here I can perfectly understand how well 
the moral and religious training of pupils might be intrusted 
to discreet clerical hands ; and would allow to the chaplain of 
such an institution preeminence in rank and emolument, as due 
to the sacredness of his calling. There would be some studies, 
also, in which he could give valuable helj) ; as in that of Bib- 
lical, and even secular history ; and over all he might exert 
a wholesome influence. But T am wholly at a loss to account 
for the fact that in England, the teaching of the classical lan- 
guages should be considered as almost necessarily devolving 
upon the clergy. Why should it require Holy Orders to fit a 
man to teach the heathen tongues of Athens and Rome, any 
more than to teach the Christian tongues of France, Germany 
or Italy ? — or, indeed, any more than to teach drawing or music 
or dancing? Greek and Latin are important elements in the 
education of a gentleman, but they enter very indirectly into 
the training of a Christian. They may lead a man part of the 
way to the woolsack ; but they cannot carry him one step on 
the road that leads to the Everlasting Gates. No : many chil- 
dren have gone in thereat, that never stumbled through a de- 
clension; or that stumbled through one, and nothing more: 
many men, that in boyhood fell through the Asses' Bridge, 
have, in spite of corpulence, passed safely over the suspended 
camel's hair, that breaks only beneath iniquity : many dear 
illiterate old saints have outstripped wits and critics and 
scholars and theologians on their journey to an unaspirated 
Heaven. 

Not many years ago the patrons of a large proprietary school 
in the West of England offered their headmastership to a very 
distinguished scholar, a friend of my own, on condition that 



590 D'AROT WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

he would take Holy Orders. It was more than insinuated that 
these Orders would merely affect the fashion of his neck-tie, 
and the prejudices of a a enlightened public. My friend was a 
man of middle age, with habits and character thoroughly 
formed, and with as much idea of turning clergyman as of 
buying the practice of a dentist. Consequently the offer, 
though pecuniarily a very tempting one, was not accepted. 
My friend is prosecuting his journey heavenwards with a well- 
stored brain ; a rather ill-stored scrip ; a white conscience ; and 
a black tie. For my own part I regard such martyrdom as 
utterly out of place in a practical age. When the headmaster- 
ship is next vacant, I trust the patrons will make a similar 
offer to me. They have merely to name their salary — and their 
bishop. 

XXII. 

The Social Position of Schoolmasters 

Many of my school vacations I passed in Bruges and Brus- 
sels, and made the acquaintance from time to time of boys of 
my own age attending the Athenees, or public schools of these 
towns. Indeed, my Own brother received at such schools the 
greater part of his education. The masters were laymen ; in a 
country next to Spain perhaps the most bigotedly Catholic in 
Europe. The means of coercion at their disposal seemed to 
my young English ideas barbarously simple. No birch ; no 
cane; not even the ridiculously mild strap. How on earth 
could pupils learn Latin versification, or any other useful ac- 
complishment, without such obviously requisite stimulants? 
However, their classes of rhetoric, or senior classes, did turn 
out well-educated and most gentlemanly-mannered men. But 
the strangest thing to me was that the masters were never 
spoken of as occupying any peculiar or comical position in 
society. It never seemed to strike a boy to speak in terms of 
ridicule of his schoolmaster any more than of his clergyman 



DAT-DHEAMS OF A SGHOOLMASTER 591 

or medical attendant. In fact, society at large seemed uncon- 
sciously to regard the master of an Athenee as an ordinary 
gentleman, neither more nor less. 

One of the most polished and accomplished men I have ever 
had the honor of knowing was my brother's music-master, 
whose lessons were given at a rate that would appear to us 
ludicrously small. He associated on terms of perfect intimacy 
with families of very ancient lineage in the neighborhood of 
Bruges. He used to describe in the most humorous fashion 
the treatment he occasionally met with in English salons, whose 
occupants, of undoubtedly high position at home, were tempo- 
rarily residing abroad for reasons of financial retrenchment. 

I have had many relatives educated entirely in Florence, 
and have heard that the masters, who visited the leading schools 
there, held a social position in that not unaristocratic city quite 
equal to that of an ordinary barrister amongst ourselves. And 
these masters had no ecclesiastical title to raise them in the 
social scale. 

In England, at a very early period, the birch and cane were 
engrafted upon our educational system. They naturally made 
the position of a schoolmaster odious in the sight of children, 
and somewhat ludicrous in the eyes of the world, and espe- 
cially so in the eyes of women. Now the English character is 
essentially practical, but by no means bigoted to logic. Their 
political Constitution might be theoretically assailed on many 
points ; but it works satisfactorily as a whole. In the matter 
of education, England shows an equal disregard of logic and 
an equal determination of working good ends by any practical 
means. The position of a schoolmaster needed backing up, it 
seemed, in some way. Then make the schoolmaster a clergy- 
man. Never mind the absurdity of calling upon a man to 
swear that he will spend and be spent in preaching the Glad 
Tidings, when he knows, and everybody knows, that he will 
pass his life in teaching the rudiments of Greek and Latin. 
With a practical people such obligations are generally under- 
stood in a practical way ; and the practical way of understand- 



692 D'ARCT WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

ing them seems, in this one instance, to lie in ignoring them 
partially or altogether. 

There can be little doubt that, without the aid of clerical 
prestige, no body of men could have continued to command 
public respect in spite of the odium and ridicule attached to 
such flagrantly cruel implements as the cane and birch. The 
former of these, as I know to my cost, is painful in the ex- 
treme ; and the infliction of the latter is always brutal, and 
very often abominably indecent. 

Now, in Scotland, whatever our faults may be — and Scottish 
writers on the London press purge us from time to time of our 
conceit — we are acknowledged to be a logical race. Conse- 
quently we call a schoolmaster a schoolmaster. We no more 
think of allowing him to take fictitious orders, than we should 
think of giving a haberdasher the fictitious title of M.D., and 
yet a schoolmaster in Scotland has certainly need of any aid 
that could be rendered for the improvement of his social status. 
The latter is far below that of any other professional body. 
Yet, low as is comparatively the social position of the Scottish 
schoolmaster, he can point to his ridiculous but almost innocu- 
ous leather strap, and boast that he has contrived therewith to 
maintain discipline and stimulate to exertion, while a wealth- 
ier body, with rich endowments and ecclesiastical prestige, have 
made unsparing use of two instruments, whose barbarity as far 
exceeds that of his own strap, as the income of an Eton pro- 
vost exceeds that of a rector of our high school. 

But to revert to the consideration of the social rank of a 
master in a Scottish grammar-school. The rectors of the two 
chief Edinburgh schools are exceptions to the ordinary rule. 
They enjoy a social rank befitting the dignity of their official 
duties. But how is it that the masters of classics, mathematics, 
and modern languages, in these and similar institutions, take 
by general consent a lower place at feasts than a medical man 
of little practice, and an advocate of few briefs ? 

In the social estimate of a whole order of men, I am inclined 
to think the world at large cannot be altogether wrong. There 



DAT-BREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 693 

is generally fault on both sides. If, then, we schoolmasters are 
at fault, it would be of use if we could only hit upon our weak 
point. We might then give it a fair and serious consideration ; 
and use means, if they could be suggested, for remedying the 
evil. 

I have heard it said by a gentleman of very high position, 
and of reputed scholarship, that the subordinate master in a 
great Scottish school is only expected by a Scottish public to 
be a man of ordinary attainments, who can drill his pupils well 
in the rudiments, and just keep pace with them in their higher 
reading. While such melancholy opinions are generally enter- 
tained of our craft, it is especially incumbent upon us to en- 
deavor by our teaching and our lives to belie them. It is 
because we too often give in, for want of courage or proper 
pride, to such a condemnation of our order that we continue to 
be members of a Pariah profession. We are too often contented 
with the limited intellectual stores that were laid in at college. 
We too often go uninquiringly .through a dull routine ; caring 
little whether or no we carry the inclinations and sympathies 
of our boys along with us, so long as we get through the pre- 
scribed work, and preserve a mechanical discipline. We are 
not impressed with the fact that a schoolmaster cannot be too 
learned, too accomplished. Under any circumstances, some- 
thing of the tedious must creep into the routine of school-work, 
and it will need a wide field of continual reading to enable one 
.to illustrate and vivify daily lessons, that vary from the declen- 
sion of penna to the study of the Agamemnon. 

The pupils at our chief public schools study German and 
French. Should a master of the two great ancient languages 
be ignorant of linguistic studies, in which his pupils may be 
proficient ? No ; he should outstrip them immeasurably in 
every department of study that bears ujDon his own. He should 
be so impressed with the dignity of his calling, — and what call- 
ing, save the cure of souls is more dignified ? — so full of chast- 
ened respect for himself, as to command the respect of his 
pupils, though he may fail for a while to command that of the 
s. M.— 38 



594 D'ABCY WENTWORTE THOMPSON 

more unthinking of the public. If we could only work our- 
selves up to some such standard we might then gradually 
dispense with that little leathern instrument, that still keeps 
a burr of ridicule attached to our black gowns. 

But, stop : am I again traveling to Utopia? Let me turn 
my hobby's head, and gallop back to dear Dunedin. When a 
man's liver is out of order what on earth is the use of his doc- 
tor's telling him to keep early hours ; to use a cold tub ; to live 
temperately, and take frequent outdoor exercise? Why, his 
grandmother might have suggested that. What the man wants 
is a blue pill or two. They can be taken in a minute ; and he 
need not materially change his dietetics. Could not some such 
violent but easy remedy be suggested for the cure of our social 
abasement ? Certainly. Why should barring-out be confined 
to boys ? — or strikes to artisans ? A fig for political economy ! 
Let us form ourselves into a league and proclaim a general 
Steike of Schoolmasters ! There will be some sneaking 
recusants among us ; but we will brain them with their own 
dictionaries. 

Some summer morning Scotland will awake and find every 
grammatical fountain frozen. What fun it will be for the 
boys ! For a week the parents may outface the inconvenience ; 
but in a month the animal, always latent in boyhood, will be 
growing rampant and outrageous. Gradually will it develop, 
unsoothed by the influences of grammar, unchecked by the 
sterner influences of our magic leather. No father will be safe, 
in his own house. The smaller boys will be smoking brown 
paper in the drawing-room, and the older boys wallowing in 
Bass and cavendish in the lower kitchen. 

Meanwhile, calmly reposing in the stillness of his back parlor, 
M'Gillicuddy will be putting the finishing stroke to that folio 
edition of " Cornelius Nepos," on which his fame in after ages 
is to rest ; and I, in my aerial lodgings, shall be setting to Greek 
iambics the moral aphorisms of the great Tupper, whose terse- 
ness and originality are the wonder of a grateful people. 

Our hospitable provost, like his predecessor in olden days 



DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 595 

when the English were marching north, will hold a meeting 
of troubled citizens. They will meet in arms ; each father will 
be provided with his life-preserver of cut leather. One speaker 
will tell how nouns are at a fabulous premium; that an adjec- 
tive may not be had for love or money. Another will tell the 
horrible tale, how whole families have for weeks subsisted on 
the smallest prepositions. They will attempt a compromise. 
We shall decline treating on such terms. They will surrender 
unconditionally ; and our terms — monstrous as they may seem 
— shall be as follows : 

A schoolmaster, who shall have graduated at an university, 
shall hereafter be addressed, personally or epistolarily, with the. 
courtesy usually shown to a second-rate solicitor or a briefless 
advocate. 

Whosoever shall wittingly and willfully offend against the 
above decree, let him for the first oflense be dismissed after due 
admonition ; but, on a second offense being proven, let him be 
sentenced to parse verbatim the folio edition of M'Gillicuddy's 
" Nepos," declining all nouns, conjugating all verbs, and repeat- 
ing all syntax rules, usque ad Rei ipsius et totius Ou/rise nauseam} 

XXIII 

Tint, Tint, Tint^ 

It is now twelve years ago that I was for the first time 
brought face to face with a class, some fifty in number, of little 
Latin novices. They all regarded me with sensations of won- 
derment and awe ; they had but a faint idea, luckily, of the 
terror with which I regarded them. I had, certainly, the 
recollections of my own long elementary training to guide me 
in my proceedings ; and I had the traditions of the school, to 
which I had been recently appointed as master, to direct my 
uncertain steps. But the recollections of my own training 

' even to disgust for the thing itself and for the whole tribe 
2 Lost, Lost, Lost. (Scotch.) 



596 D'ARCY WENTWORTE THOMPSON 

were all tinged with melancholy ; and with the traditions of my 
new sphere of duty I was but imperfectly acquainted. 

In the middle of my class-room stood a machine, somewhat 
resembling a patent engine for the simultaneous polishing of 
many knives ; and I was desired to take a firm grasp of its 
wooden handle, and to turn it with vigor and rapidity. And 
an implement of simple leather was put into my hands, by the 
dexterous application of which I was to quicken the apprehen- 
sions of such children as might be uninfluenced by the monoto- 
nous music of my gerund-stone. 

And for many a day, obedient to tradition and to my orders, 
I turned rapidly the wooden handle, and flourished vigorously 
the simple implement to the very best of my ability. But, 
strange to say, although I was then youthful and strong, and 
eaten up with a superfluous zeal for my calling, I could never 
turn the machine without its creaking painfully ; and whenever 
I applied my leathern implement to a child's palm, I was 
immediately conscious of a thrill, as of electricity, that ran 
from my finger-tips to the very center of m}^ nervous system ; 
and sometimes, after the performance of such an ordinary act 
of duty, I would find myself standing before my pupils with a 
heightened color upon my face, and a tingling in my ears ; and 
to a looker-on I should have appeared as one ashamed of 
having done some questionable deed. 

Finding all my efforts unavailing to work smoothly and 
noiselessly my mechanical engine of instruction, I at length 
relinquished it altogether ; and it has been now standing for 
years in a side-room adjoining my place of business, and is 
covered over with cobwebs, and rusted at the juncture of the 
stone and handle. 

To supply the place of its simple mechanism, I brought to 
bear upon my pupils all the moral and intellectual means at 
my disposal. I spared myself neither in the matter of time nor 
trouble in my endeavors to educe the dormant faculties of my 
charges ; and enjoying as I did for many years a bodily health 
impervious to fatigue, and having a keen sympathy with boy- 



DAT-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTEM 597 

hood, I succeeded more and more until I almost ceased at 
length to regret the disappearance of my gerund-stone. 

But the more I gave satisfaction to myself, the less I gave 
satisfaction to the majority of my so-called patrons — the guard- 
ians of my young pupils. From time to time, when I was 
indulging in a dream of appreciated toil, I heard of complaints 
being circulated by such as were favorers of mechanism in 
instruction. Pui^ils in whose progress I had begun to take a 
keen interest were from time to time removed without a word 
of explanation or the civility of a farewell. " They were not 
grounded" said these waggish but unmannerly guardians; 
meaning all the while, " They were not ground." 

I had almost begun to despair of my system, and to think 
that I had mistaken my calling, and was casting about my 
eyes for some honest trade to which I might apprentice myself, 
when one afternoon my class was honored with a lengthened 
visit from a gentleman of acknowledged rank and worth and 
judgment. After the lesson was over I complained to this dis- 
tinguished visitor that my system of conveying instruction, 
as being natural and philosophic, was popularly considered 
a more difficult one for a pupil than the ancient turning of a 
piece of mechanism. My visitor, who had a son under my 
charge, stated his firm conviction that my system was not only 
likely to produce better results, but was also in its operation far 
more easy and interesting for a young pupil to follow. For 
that moment I felt reassured, and determined never again to 
regret the absence of my gerund-stone. 

And now to treat of the loss of my other auxiliary imple- 
ment. The application of this latter, I can honestly say, was 
never made excepting with the view of stimulating ever-dor- 
mant energies, and of repressing tendencies to chronic negligence 
or misconduct. I considered myself as an abstraction ; as the 
embodied representative of the class ; and used the implement 
only to protect the interests of the latter, which suffered, to my 
mind, whenever one of its members, by carelessness or lack of 
study, turned upon himself that stream of time and energy 



698 D'ABCT WENTWORTH THOMPSON 

that should have run uninterruptedly to the irrigation of the 
body corporate. In fact I made myself the dividend in a long 
division sum, whose divisor was duty ; the quotient, I found, 
was teacher + superintendent, and the remainder, personal iden- 
tity, which was very small in comparison with the divisor, and 
might practically be ignored. So, when a little fellow walked 
after me for a few days at the striking of the bell, with his 
hands beneath imaginary coat-tails in imitation of my gait, I 
considered him as only joking with me in my capacity of 
remainder ; and I merely asked him to desist, as otherwise I 
should make fun of him in revenge ; and he desisted. And 
when a boy wrote my name upon the desk, I was contented 
with showing him how he had misspelled it ; and he rubbed 
it out at my request. And when a boy, years ago, put his 
tongue into his cheek after an admonition, I showed his com- 
rades what little control he had over that organ ; knowing as I 
did that he intended to protrude it on the side that would have 
been invisible to me. And I may state that such trifling inci- 
dents were of so rare occurrence that I could enumerate them 
all upon the fingers of one hand. 

But still, although I was conscious that I used the imple- 
ment with good intent, and aware that it was similarly used by 
men who were my superiors in age, and certainly not my 
inferiors in kindliness and sj^mpathy with boyhood, I was 
haunted with an idea that the use of it was founded on an error 
in our system of instruction, and I was long pondering where 
the error could lie ; and I found the subject far more difficult 
than I had at first supposed, and I confess it still to be a prob- 
lem difficult of solution. 

I was in this frame of mind one day, when, according to an 
unalterable rule, there came under the influence of the electric 
implement a little, quiet, well-behaved, and intelligent for- 
eigner. The application had scarce been made when a young 
comrade — bless the lad ! — gave vent to an unmistakable 
hiss ! Order, of course, was immediately and energetically re- 
established. But in my walk that afternoon by the sea, and in 



DAT-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 599 

many a lonely walk afterwards, I thought about that little 
foreigner and his courageous comrade. And I thought how 
that little foreigner, returning to his own land, the ancient 
home of courtesy and gentle manners, would tell his friends of 
our rude, northern ways. And I tremble at the idea of my 
usage of the Electric Leather being narrated in the hearing of 
one of those terrible colonels, whom their emperor holds with 
difficulty on the leash. For I thought if ever our great metropo- 
lis were in their hands, how ill it would fare with all therein 
that turned the gerund-stone, and with those therein that bare 
my hapless surname. And the name of these is Legion. And 
knowing that the comrade was no vulgar and low-natured boy, 
I felt sure in my heart that there was at least something right 
in the impulse that had pushed him into danger and disobedi- 
ence. But still I was afraid of allowing sentimentalism or 
impulsiveness on my part to take the place of duty, however 
stern and unpalatable. 

I was standing not alone one morning in the lobby of my 
own home, just before leaving for the day's work. A great- 
coat of mine was hanging from the wall. My companion, in a 
playful mood, put a small white hand into one of its pockets, 
and drew a something out; then thrust it back hurriedly as 
though it had been a something venomous. And over a very 
gentle face passed a look of surprise not unmingled with reproof ; 
but the reproof gave way almost momently to the wonted smile. 
But I long remembered the mild reproof upon that gentle face, 
for it was an expression very seldom seen there ; and it came 
afterwards to be numbered with other sad and sweet memories. 

Meanwhile, at the end of the last bench upon my class sat 
a boy who was very backward in his learning. He was con- 
tinually absent upon what seemed to me frivolous pretenses. 
These absences entailed upon me much additional trouble. I 
had occasionally to keep him and a little remnant in the room 
when the others had gone out to play ; to make up to him and 
them for lost time. And on one occasion my look was very 
crosS; and my speech very short ; for it seemed to me provoking 



600 B'ABCT WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

that children should be so backward in their Latin. And when 
the work was over and we two were left alone, he followed me 
to my desk, and said, " You have no idea, sir, how weak I am." 
And I said, " Why, my boy, you look stout enough." But he 
answered, " I am really very weak, sir ; far weaker than I 
look ! " and there was a pleading earnestness in his words that 
touched me to the heart ; and, afterwards, there was an unseen 
chord of sympathy that bound the master to the pupil, who was 
still very dull at Latin. 

And still he would be absent ; at times, for a day or two to- 
gether. But it excited no surprise. For the boy seemed to sit 
almost a stranger among his fellows, and in play-hours seemed 
to take no interest in boyish games. And by and by he had 
been absent for some weeks together. But I was afraid to ask 
concerning him ; thinking he might have been removed, as 
many boys had been, without a letter of explanation, or his 
shaking me by the hand. And one morning I received a letter 
with a broad black edge, telling me that he had died the day 
previously of a virulent contagious fever. 

So when school was over I made my way to his whilom 
lodging, and stood at the door, pondering. For the fever, of 
which the child had died, had been to me a Death-in-life, and 
had passed like the Angel of old over my dwelling; but, unlike 
that angel, had spared my first-born, and only-born. And be- 
cause the latter sat each evening on my knee, I was afraid of 
the fever, and intended only to leave my card, as a mark of 
respectful sympathy. But the good woman of the house said, 
" Nay, nay, sir, but ye'll see the laddie ; " and I felt drawn by 
an influence of fatherhood more constraining than a father's 
fears, and followed the good woman into the small and dim 
chamber where my pupil was lying. And, as I passed the 
threshold, my masterhood slipped ofi^ me like a loose robe ; and 
I stood, very humble and pupil-like, in that awful Presence, that 
teacheth a wisdom to babes and sucklings, to which our treas- 
ured lore is but a jingling of vain words. And, when left alone, 
I drew near the cheerless and dismantled bed, on which my 



DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 601 

pupil lay asleep in his early coffin. And he looked very calm 
and happy, as though there had been to him no pain in passing 
from a world where he had had few companions and very little 
pleasure. And I knew that his boyhood had been as dreary as 
it had been short; and I thought that the good woman of his 
lodging had perhaps been his only sympathizing friend at hand. 
And I communed with myself whether aught I had done could 
have made his dullness more dull. And I felt thankful for the 
chord of sympathy that had united us, unseen, for a little while. 
But, in a strange and painful way, I stood rebuked before the 
calm and solemn and unrebuking face of the child on whom I 
had frowned for his being backward in his Latin. 

That evening, as usual, my own child was seated on my knee, 
making sunrise out of sunset for myself and his mother's mother. 
And the table was alive with moo-cows, and bow-wows, and silly 
sheep. And we sang snatches of impossible songs, or hid our- 
selves behind chairs and curtains in a barefaced and undeceitful 
manner. And the penates at my hearth, that were chipped and 
broken, . blinked merrily by the fire-light; and the child was 
taken to his tiny bed; and the chipped penates, thereupon, 
slowly faded out of view, and disappeared among the cinders. 

And I sat, musing; alone. And yet not all alone. For in 
the chair, where recently had been sitting the mother of my 
child's mother, there sat a gray transparent shape. And the 
shape and I were familiar friends. He had sat with me many 
a time from midnight until when the morning had come peeping 
through the green lattice. And he had peopled all the chambers 
of my house with sad thoughts and black-stoled memories. So, 
never heeding my familiar friend, I sat, staring in the fire, and 
thinking. 

And I thought, sadly and almost vindictively, of the dreary 
years of my own early boyhood, with their rope of sand, and 
the mill-wheel that had ground no corn. And I remembered 
how at times there would come to me in my exile the sound of 
my brother's laugh, and the sweeter music of my mother's voice. 
But I remembered, thankfully, that through years of monotonous 



602 D'ABCT WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

work and rough usage I had enjoyed sound health, and had had 
companions with whom I had walked and talked, and romped 
and fought, cheerily. 

And I wondered whether I should be spared to see my own 
child grow to be a merry and frank-hearted little fellow; to 
hear the music of his ringing laugh ; to see his face flushed with 
rude but healthful sport ; to hear of him as beloved for many 
boyish virtues, and reproved, not unlovingly, for his share of 
boyish faults. And I longed to be climbing with him the hill 
of difficulty, and lightening the ascent for him with varied con- 
verse ; resting now and then to look down upon the valley, or 
to let him gather blue-bells that grew on the hillside. 

And then I thought of a boy who had sat of late on the last 
bench in my class-room, with a timid and scared look, beside 
his bluff and bold companions; who had stood in the noisy 
play -ground, lonely as in a wilderness ; whom I had seen that 
afternoon in his early coffin, with the seal upon his forehead of 
everlasting peace ; the peace that passeth all understanding. 

So I determined — from the recollections of my own dreary 
boyhood ; for the mild reproof that once had clouded momently 
very gentle eyes ; for the love I bear my own little one ; and for 
the calm and unrebuking face I had seen that afternoon — that 
I would do as little as possible in the exercise of my stern duties 
to make of life a weariness to young children ; and especially to 
such as should be backward in their Latin. 

XXIV 

The Pressure op Gentleness 

A close relation of my own was for twelve years an officer in 
almost the severest of all continental services. In that chivalric 
army is conserved a traditional discipline whose details would 
appall a democrat, and the exactions of which could only be 
endured by an obedient and military race. He tells me that, 
in his long experience, he only met with one captain who, in 
dealing with his company, avowedly ignored all means of phys- 



DAT-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 603 

ical coercion. On this captain's breast were the orders of two 
kingdoms and two empires. After one well-fought day he had 
been voted by acclamation as a candidate for the Order of the 
Iron Crown, which he would have obtained had he added his 
own signature to those of all his brother officers ; and yet so soft- 
hearted was this chevalier sans peur^ that any slattern beggar- 
woman could draw from him an ill-spared florin. In a village 
where a portion of the regiment were once quartered, the good 
cure^ at the close of a sermon on Christian character, told his 
flock that if they wished to see Christianity in action, they 
might see it in a captain of Grenadiers, who clothed their 
poorest children with his pocket-money, and whose closest com- 
panion was ignorant of his good deeds. This captain's comjDany 
was noted as being the best dressed and the best conducted in 
the regiment. There were at Solferino (and there are, alas! 
such cases in all engagements) cases of gallant but stern ofiicers 
that fell by a traitorous bullet from behind. There was not one 
man in the company of this captain that would not have taken 
in his stead a bullet aimed at him from the front. 

A year and a half ago I met in Yorkshire an invalid young 
sailor. From his smooth face, short stature, and attenuated 
form, I should have taken him for a senior midshipman. To 
my complete astonishment I found he was commander of a 
Pacific liner, with a numerous crew under his orders, and in 
receipt of a splendid income. He had been third in command, 
when the two seniors had taken fever, and his gallantry under 
trying circumstances of all kinds had procured his unusually 
early promotion. I discussed with him the theory of discipline. 
He considered physical chastisement as brutal ; swearing as un- 
christian ; and hectoring as unmanly. " The man who cannot 
control himself is not fit to command a crew," he said, tritely 
and truly. I looked in wonder at this shrimp of a man, that 
was speaking with such calm confidence. " I never," he con- 
tinued, " raise my voice above its usual tone to enforce an 
order." He was worn to skin and bone by a chest disorder of 
> a knight without fear ' curate 



604 D'ARGT WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

long continuance, which he considered would close his life at 
no distant date. I could have pushed him over with a rude 
jostle of my elbow. But there was something in his face that 
told you unmistakably he was not the man with whom to take 
a liberty. He gave me a remarkable anecdote of himself. His 
ship was alongside of an American liner in the Liverpool docks. 
The Yankee captain was dining with him, and the conversation 
fell upon the means of maintaining order in a crew. The 
Yankee scouted all means but the stick. He and his mates 
used on principle the most brutal means of coercion. During 
their argument the steward came to announce that the English 
crew were fighting the Yankees on the neighboring vessel. 
The captains went on deck, and the Englishman, slinging him- 
self by a rope, alighted in the midst of an uproarious crowd. 
" Well, my men," said he, " so you are making beasts of your- 
selves, and disgracing your captain." And the big fellows 
slunk off without a word to their own vessel, and one or two of 
the ringleaders were set for an hour or two to swab the decks. 
But of the quarreling tars there was not a man but could have 
lifted his wee captain and dropped him overboard without an 
effort. I trust to God he may yet be living, and may long be 
spared, as a specimen of a quiet, resolute English Christian 
skipper. 

My chiefest friend at school was a man of widest mental 
culture, of even temper, and of sound judgment. Among his 
friends and my own at Trinity I knew a few men of a similarly 
high stamp. I remember one man, in particular, in whom the 
scholar and the Christian so curiously blended, that it would 
be difficult to say where his Latin ended and his religion 
began. He was a spiritual and mental merman. But if I 
were called upon to name the Aristides of my life-acquaintance, 
I should name a man whom I never knew till I had crossed 
the Tweed. I believe it would be as hard to warp a Carlyle 
into sentimental or religious cant, and a prophet-Gumming into 
common-sense and modesty, as to twist the nature of my friend 
into petty words or illiberal action. 



DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER 605 

He was once the superintendent of a public educational insti- 
tution. He had been present one day in the drill-ground, 
where an honest sergeant with a good deal of superfluous 
bluster was putting a little regiment through its facings. 
When the boys were dismissed the sergeant approached his 
superior, and said : " Excuse the liberty, sir ; but really, when 
you are more used to boys, you'll find that you must put more 
pepper into what you do and say." " Well," said my friend, 
" every man has his own way ; for my own part, I don't believe 
in pepper." 

A few weeks afterwards the principal was in his library, 
when the sergeant was ushered in. " I've come, sir," said the 
latter, " to ask a favor. Those boys are a little troublesome at 
times. If you'd be kind enough just to stand at your drawing- 
room window for a few minutes when drill was going on, it 
would do a deal of good ; if you'd only stand for a few minutes, 
reading a newspaper." 

Ah ! worthy sergeant, your pepper won't do, after all. No, 
friend, keep it for your vegetables, and use it then in modera- 
tion. 

I hold that men may be called of God to more offices than 
the holy one of the Christian ministry. There was an under- 
officer at my old school, who to me seemed always to partake 
largely of some of the finest attributes of the gentleman. He 
had failed, through continued ill-health, in business as a book- 
seller, and was a well-read man. He was uniformly civil and 
respectful to us senior scholars; but, while we could tip and 
bribe others, we could never venture on the liberty of an un- 
adorned surname with him. This man was called to the 
humble office of maintaining order in the school-yard. So 
there are men called to command men on the field of battle, 
and boys in the schoolroom. I have met with a schoolmaster 
in Scotland who could govern a crowd of boys in one room, 
though they might be divided into scattered groups, and 
engaged in varied work ; and his only implements of discipline 
were a word or two of good-natured banter or kindly encour- 



606 D'AnCT WENTWOltTH TEOMPBON 

agement, and occasionally a calm and stern rebuke. I have 
been much struck by the expression of his opinion, that phys- 
ical coercion cannot be dispensed with altogether. In defiance, 
however, of a kindness, a sagacity, and a judgment that I 
respect, I do most firmly believe that the necessity for physical 
chastisement rests mainly upon two blemishes in our ordinary 
school system: the mechanical nature of our routine of work, 
and the crowding of our class-rooms. In the latter respect, we 
are more at fault than our English brethren ; in the former, we 
are far less sinning. In the teaching of our elementary classes 
we employ far more spirit, and far less wood; and I wish I 
could add, no leather. There is less of a gulf between pupil and 
master. The severest means of physical chastisement at the 
disposal of the latter is almost innocuous. But mild as our 
implement may be from the point of view of physical pain 
inflicted, its employment is of necessity associated with some 
degree of odium, and a more formidable amount of ridicule. 
I am convinced that many children imagine that we school- 
masters were as naturally born with tawse, as foxes with tails. 
Did you ever see children in a nursery play at school ? The 
rule seems to be for the elder brother to play our part ; and that 
part is limited to the fun or business of flogging all his little 
sisters. 

We have gone a great way already in Scotland in the way of 
civilized teaching, in forbearing to use an instrument of acute 
pain and an instrument of indecent brutality. Let us make a 
further advance, and if we can invent some intellectual and 
moral substitute for our ridiculous scourges, let us send the 
latter in bundles to the public schools of England, to be there 
adopted when their system is sufficiently ripened by a few 
extra centuries of Christianity. Let us clothe their scholastic 
nakedness with the last rags of our barbarism. Our boys will 
be none the less manly and respectful. Flogging can never 
instil courage into a child, but it has helped to transform many 
an one into a sneak. And sneakishness is a vice more hard to 
eradicate than obduracy. So far from curing an ill-conditioned 



DAT-DRBAM8 OF A 8CB0OLMA8TER 607 

boy of rude and vulgar ways, it is calculated rather to render 
inveterate in him a distaste for study, and a solid hatred of our 
craft. 

Let us be less careful of the mere number of our classes, and 
more careful of their intellectual culture. Let us care more for 
what we think of ourselves, than what the public think of us. 
The respect of others follows upon self-respect. Let us not care 
to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. Let us be content with 
classes of limited numbers, every member of which can keep 
pace with a properly advancing curriculum. Let us aim at a 
broad and invigorating culture, not a narrow and pedantic 
one ; let us ignore examinations of College or Civil service, and 
aim only at the great and searching examination of actual life- 
Let our aims be high and generous, irrespective of the exactions 
of unreasoning parents and well-meaning but unqualified inter- 
meddlers ; let our means of coercion be dignified, in spite of the 
trials to which our tempers may be exposed. Let us endeavor 
to make our pupils love their work without fearing us. They 
may live — God knows — to love us. Whether they ever love us 
or not perhaps matters but little, if we do our work single- 
heartedly. The mens conscia redi^ is of itself no mean reward. 
I am, perhaps, an enthusiast ; but I have an idea that, ere a 
generation is passed away, the last sound of the last tawse will 
be heard in the leading grammar-schools of Scotland. Her 
scholars will be none the worse taught, and her schoolmasters 
none the less respected, when instruction has been made less 
rugged in her aspect, and discipline is maintained by the more 
than hydraulic pressure of a persistent and continuous gentle- 
ness. 

And, brother schoolmaster, remember evermore the exceed- 
ing dignity of our calling. It is not the holiest of all callings ; 
but it runs near and parallel to the holiest. The lawyer's wits 
are sharpened, and his moral sense not seldom blunted, by a 
life-long familiarity with ignorance, chicanery, and crime. The 
physician, in the exercise of a more beneficent craft, is sad- 
' mind conscious of right 



608 D'AROY WENTWOBTH THOMPSON 

dened continually by the spectacle of human weakness and 
human pain. We have usually to deal with fresh and unpol- 
luted natures. A noble calling, but a perilous ! We are dress- 
ers in a moral and mental vineyard. We are undershepherds 
of the Lord's little ones ; and our business it is to lead them 
into green pastures, by the sides of refreshing streams. Let us 
into our linguistic lessons introduce cunningly and impercepti- 
bly all kinds of amusing stories; stories of the real kings of 
earth, that have reigned in secret, crownless and unsceptred ; 
leaving the vain show of power to gilded toy-kings and make- 
believe statesmen ; of the angels that have walked the earth in 
the guise of holy men and holier women ; of the seraph-sing- 
ers, whose music will be echoing forever ; of the cherubim of 
power, that with the mighty wind of conviction and enthusiasm 
have winnowed the air of pestilence and superstition. 

Yes, friend, throw a higher poetry than all this into your 
linguistic work ; the poetry of pure and holy motive. Then, 
in the coming days, when you are fast asleep under the green 
grass, they will not speak lightly of you over their fruit and 
wine, mimicking your accent, and retailing dull, insipid boy- 
pleasantries. Enlightened by the experience of fatherhood, 
they will see with a clear remembrance your firmness in deal- 
ing with their moral faults, your patience in dealing with their 
intellectual weakness. And, calling to mind the old school- 
room, they will think : " Ah ! it was good for us to be there. 
For, unknown to us, were made therein three tabernacles ; one 
for us, and one for our schoolmaster, and one for Him that 
is the Friend of all children, and the Master of all school- 
masters." 

Ah ! believe me, brother mine, where two or three children 
are met together, unless He, who is the Spirit of gentleness, be 
in the midst of them, then our Latin is but sounding brass, 
and our Greek a tinkling cymbal. 






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